

on 
Truth 





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ESSAY ON TRUTH 



By Milton R. Scott. 



" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

— Shakespeare. 

" The highest perfection of human reason is to know that 
there is an infinity of truth beyond its reach." 

— Pascal. 



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Newark, Ohio. 



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THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Receiveei 

AUG 26 1903 

Copyright Entry 

^USS O^ XXc No 
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COPY B^ 



Copyrighted, 1903, by Milton R. Scott. 






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CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Chapter 1. Limitations of Our Knowledge in Re- 
spect to Physical Science 5 

Chapter 2. Limitations of Our Knowledge in Re- 
spect to Physical Science — Continued 11 

Chapter 3. Limitations of Our Knowledge in Re- 
spect to Other Sciences — and Religion 14 

Chapter 4. We Can Not Live by Facts Alone 18 

Chapter 5. The Letter and the Spirit 25 

Chapter 6. What Makes Knowledge Most Valu- 
able to Us? 29 

Chapter 7. The High Art of Teaching 31 

Chapter 8. Concerning Medical Practice — with 
some Remarks on Christian Science and Kindred 

Systems 37 

Chapter 9. Are all Men Created Equal ? 42 

Chapter 10. Certain Illusions and Their Uses and 
Purposes 45 

Chapter 11. Concerning the World's Philosophies. 51 

Chapter 12. Concerning Morality 54 

Chapter 13. The Mysteries of Religion — but Man 
Has a Religious Nature 60 

Chapter 14. The Various Religions of the World. 65 
Chapter 15. The "Sympathy of Religions" — Not- 
withstanding Their Variety 70 

Chapter 16. Is Catholicism Evolving as well as 

Protestantism ? 75 

(3) 



4 Contents. 

PAGE 

Chapter 17. Mystery of the Divine Being 78 

Chapter 18. "And What Profit Should We Have, 
if We Pray unto Him?" 81 

Chapter 19. The Doctrine of the Trinity 84 

Chapter 20. The Doctrine of the Atonement 88 

Chapter 21. Other Christian Doctrines 92 

Chapter 22. The Authority of the Bible 99 

Chapter 23. The Forms of Religion 101 

Chapter 24. How Far May the Christian Minister 
or Teacher Evolve ? 102 

Chapter 25. Truth Has an Abiding Foundation 
—"Its Own Revolvency Upholds the Earth.". .. . 107 



Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER I. 

LIMITATIONS OF OUR KNOWLEDGE IN RESPECT TO 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 

Since the world began the question, "What is 
truth?" has been asked by theologians, by phi- 
losophers, by scientists, by skeptics, by scoffers, 
by devotees, by men in all the walks and ways of 
life; but although there have been solutions and 
solutions and answers and answers, no final solu- 
tion or answer has been vouchsafed. 

But while men have never compassed the sub- 
stance of truth or defined its essence, we know 
that it is both vast and minute, both manifold and 
particular, both abstract and concrete, both spir- 
itual and material, both absolute and relative, and 
both subjective and objective. 

To illustrate and emphasize the subjective side 
or element of truth — in other words, to show 
that truth of all kinds is essentially within us as 
well as without us — is the point and purpose of 
this essay ; and we shall be well satisfied if we can 

(5) 



6 Essay on Truth. 

furnish a clear and rational — however partial 
it may be — discussion of our subject without at- 
tempting a complete answer to the question, 
"What is Truth?" 

Let us look at some of the difficulties in the 
way of our obtaining a complete apprehension 
of any truth whatever, difficulties alike inherent 
in the substance of truth and the limitations of 
our capacity. 

At first thought it would seem that in the nat- 
ural or material world, we should at least find 
the substratum of the complete knowledge we de- 
sire and a clear and abiding foundation for the 
edifice we would fain rear to the skies ; but mani- 
festly Nature will not have it thus. Not only 
does she hide the infinities of space from our 
eyes, but she will not permit us to know the 
essence of her tiniest seed or flower or even of 
her atoms and molecules. 

And not only so; but she is full of mysteries 
and paradoxes and illusions — shall we also say 
delusions ? — wherewith she beguiles and in- 
terests and stimulates and educates us. 

Our eyes are not made to receive the direct 
rays of the sun, but must be content with re- 
flected or borrowed light ; — are not the eyes of 
our understanding similarly constituted in refer- 
ence to the reception of Truth ? 



Essay on Truth. 7 

Our stomachs are not made for pure nutrition, 
but must receive all food in bulk, subjecting it to 
the mysterious process of digestion and assimila- 
tion and throwing off the excrement ; — do we 
not have to go through a psychological process 
similar to this before we can make any truth a 
part of our constitution ? 

All or nearly all the seeds of the vegetable 
kingdom are surrounded with a shell of greater 
or less hardness, which is necessary not only for 
the protection of the shell, but for its formation 
and ripening. Does it not seem necessary that a 
large proportion of the Truth we appropriate 
should be covered with a shell of error or what 
we call "superstition?" 

The air we breathe is composed of 79 parts of 
nitrogen and 21 parts of oxygen; but thus far 
science has revealed no office of the nitrogen, so 
far as our breathing is concerned, except to di- 
lute the oxygen that we may not become intoxi- 
cated therewith. Is there also such a thing as the 
necessary dilution of Truth on account of our 
weak and imperfect understandings? 

"Sciences" almost without number have been 
evolved from our investigation of Nature's phe- 
nomena ; but it is still an open question whether 
we know anything at all as it really is; and as 
said before, we can not learn the essence of the 



8 Essay on Truth. 

smallest portion of matter, organic or inorganic. 
Who can define a single one of the seventy or 
more ^'elements'' into which all matter is now 
supposed to be divided? Who can fully explain 
any of the ''laws of Nature," with which we as- 
sume to be so familiar? Who can tell us what 
matter itself really is? 

To our physical vision the surface of our 
planet is a plane extending a limited number of 
miles in every direction; and although we know 
from the testimony of geographers and astrono- 
mers that we are the inhabitants of a spherical or 
nearly spherical body eight thousand miles in di- 
ameter, the rotundity of the earth is beyond the 
conception of our minds as well as the sight of 
our eyes. Our geographies dare not tell us that 
the earth is round like itself, but must needs em- 
ploy the symbol of a ball or orange in order to 
express its shape in terms that we can compre- 
hend. 

In mathematical geography we assume that 
the earth has an equator, that it has an axis of ro- 
tation with a north and a south pole, that it has 
two tropics and two polar circles and parallels 
of latitude and longitude, by all of which we may 
measures distances from point to point on its sur- 
face as well as the course of its revolution around 
the sun; but from the standpoint of objective 



Essay on Truth. 9 

fact, we know that there is no line or axis pass- 
ing through the earth's center and no equator or 
other circle on its surface, all these symbols hav- 
ing their only reality in our minds. 

How far, then, must we consider the science of 
Geography subjective as well as objective? 

It is very easy for scientific men to give us the 
chemical elements — with their exact proportions 
— that enter into the composition of a grain of 
wheat ; but, alas, they can give no answer to any 
inquiries concerning its real essence. In vain will 
we ask them what makes it a grain of wheat or 
how its life principle is combined with the mate- 
rial substance of which it is composed. They 
can only give us the name of this life principle, 
and hardly that. 

And what is true of the grain of wheat is true 
of every particle of matter to which we may di- 
rect our attention. 

In response to the cry for more light, "Evolu- 
tion" has come forth and given us the most mar- 
velous revelations concerning the laws and prin- 
ciples which have always operated in the material 
world and in our political and social systems ; but 
concerning the essence of matter or the origin of 
vegetable and animal life or the manner — the 
how — of the various processes of motion and 
change that we see in the material world, its hand 



10 Essay on Truth. 

is on its mouth, and its voice is as silent as the 
grave. Evolution knows not these things, 
neither can it know them. 

Need we wonder, then, that many honest peo- 
ple declare that there is no material substance 
and no realities except those which exist in our 
minds, and that others go still further and de- 
clare that our ideas themselves are only dreams 
and illusions? 



Essay on Truth. 11 



CHAPTER 11. 

LIMITATIONS OF OUR KNOWLEDGE IN RESPECT TO 

PHYSICAL SCIENCE — Continued. 

For many centuries after the rotundity of the 
earth became known, astronomers continued their 
investigations under the mistaken notion that 
the sun and other heavenly bodies revolved 
around it from day to day, until Copernicus ap- 
peared in the sixteenth century and fully estab- 
lished the fact that the earth and other planets 
revolved around the sun. But not until Kepler 
discovered his three laws of planetary motion — 
that all the planets revolve in elliptical orbits, 
that the radius-vector of each planet describes 
equal areas in equal times, and that the squares 
of the periodic times of the planets are propor- 
tional to the cubes of their mean distances from 
the sun — could any satisfactory computations 
be made concerning the motions and relations of 
the heavenly bodies. 

But even Kepler could not tell why planets 
move in this manner; and therefore it was left 
for Isaac Newton to bring us the grand revela- 
tion that the motions of the heavenly bodies are 
determined by the same law of gravitation that 



12 Essay on Truth. 

causes water to seek its level and an apple to fall 
to the earth. 

But no one has yet appeared to tell us what 
gravitation is or whence it came. And although 
we can now understand that the attraction of the 
sun — otherwise called centripetal force — causes 
the earth to move in an elliptical orbit, what and 
whence is the mighty centrifugal force that starts 
it on its course and continues its unceasing mo- 
tion of one thousand miles a minute ? 

Thus we see that whether we are surveying the 
stars in their courses or searching after the secret 
of the smallest seed or flower, we are bewildered 
and baffled and lost in mysteries that will not 
dissolve at our bidding. And however wide may 
be the horizon of our knowledge, wider and still 
wider will be the horizon of the unknown and 
the unknowable — still higher will be the heights, 
and still deeper will be the depths of the un- 
searchable mystery! 

And in the evolution of all physical sciences 
the fact stands out in bold relief that all progress 
has been made and perhaps must always be made 
by working on false or partly false hypotheses. 

The medical profession of our day have made 
the most surprising advances in anatomy and 
surgery ; but how few — we had almost said if 
any — specific remedies for the ills to which 



Essay on Truth. 13 

our flesh is heir can be found in the whole range 
of ''materia medica/^ And how largely does the 
practice of medicine still consist in a series of 
"experiments V 



14 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER III. 

LIMITATIONS OF OUR KNOWLEDGE IN RESPECT TO 
OTHER SCIENCES AND RELIGION. 

Geometry and other branches of the higher 
mathematics are supposed to be perfectly "ex- 
act;'' but we do not have to study the various 
geometrical figures half a lifetime before we 
learn that we can only produce the symbols of 
squares, circles and triangles, and that the real 
point or line or figure of any kind exists in our 
minds alone. And how little objective fact do we 
find in the whole range of the higher mathe- 
matics ! 

Will we fare a whit better in the realm of Psy- 
chology? If it were possible for us to become 
acquainted with the whole array of ancient and 
modern philosophers — from Thales and Pytha- 
goras and Socrates and Plato and Aristotle down 
to Bacon and Locke and Descartes and Spinoza 
and Kant and Berkeley with all their cotempor- 
aries and followers — and to learn all their "sys- 
tems" by heart, how little we would still know 
concerning the essential nature of our own minds, 
and how imperfectly we would comprehend the 
relation of the mind or spirit to the material 



Essay on Truth. 15 

world, which is the essential theme of all their 
speculations and discussions. Would we not still 
be unable to define either mind or matter or to 
draw the line of distinction between them? 
Would we even know whether there is such a 
line ? 

With all the learning and labors of the world's 
philosophers, it were not impertinent to ask 
whether they have not raised more questions than 
they have settled. Saying nothing about any 
other unsettled questions, we need only cite the 
fact that both wise and unwise men are still de- 
bating the question whether our wills are free 
or are bound up in a chain of cause and effect, 
commonly called "necessity.'' And even if the 
weight of authority and the voice of conscious- 
ness alike declare that we are free agents, we 
are still unable to conceive or define the nature 
of our freedom. Neither can we dispose of the 
motives which begirt us, and by which our voli- 
tions are influenced in greater or less measure — 
if not actually determined. 

"In thoughts more elevate they reasoned high, 
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 
Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute; 
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 

Is our ''consciousness of freedom" only a sub- 
jective experience? Is man's belief in his free 



16 Essay on Truth. 

agency a lawful (natural) possession or is it fire 
stolen from the gods ? 

The world is full of moral codes and systems; 
and at first blush it would seem no difficult mat- 
ter for any one to learn the precise course of con- 
duct for himself and others. But morality has its 
secrets as well as physics, and by no system that 
has ever been devised are those secrets revealed 
to us — nor can they be. 

To illustrate our meaning, take the command, 
'Thou shalt not kill.'' Not only has this com- 
mand come down to us as from the fire and 
smoke of Mount Sinai, but it is a command ap- 
proved by the reason of mankind. And yet there 
are cases in which the taking of human life is 
justifiable under the law of self-defense, (which 
is universally recognized as the first law of our 
nature), cases in which it is at least excusable 
on account of great provocation or great danger, 
and cases in which it is a positive virtue as in 
battle against the enemies of one's country. 

And when we come to the positive rules of 
morality, it is even more difficult to reduce their 
application to any sort of precision and definite- 
ness. In fact, we doubt whether it can be said of 
any act whatever that it is always wholly right or 
wholly wrong without reference to the circum- 
stances and conditions surrounding it or the mo- 



Essay on Truth. 17 

tives which prompt its performance. To say the 
least, the rules of our conduct are not written on 
the face of the sky or revealed in the voice of the 
thunder and the lightning ! 

Must we therefore abolish the distinction be- 
tween right and wrong and turn human life into 
a moral chaos ? We verily fear we should have to 
do so, if morality were a wholly objective sci- 
ence. But happily man is endowed with powers 
of reason and conscience — of which we shall 
speak hereafter. 

In the realm of Religion we have systems 
many and creeds many and doctrines many and 
prophets many and teachers many and Lords 
many and Gods many; but although these sys- 
tems have all come to us with claims of divine 
authority, and have been received by honest souls 
as complete ''revelations'' of religious truth, we 
may still ask how many of the questions that per- 
plex men's souls in reference to their relation to 
the author of their being have been settled by 
theologians and priests and ministers? How 
much objective fact can we claim as the basis of 
our faiths and hopes and aspirations? 

Whence then cometh wisdom, and where is the 
place of understanding? 



18 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER IV. 

WE CANNOT LIVE BY FACTS ALONE. 

What is the meaning and interpretation — the 
why and wherefore — of these things? Is Na- 
ture merely playing hide-and-seek with her fond 
and devoted children, or is it possible to find a 
reason for her manner of dealing with us? Is 
it possible that in hiding the truth from our eyes 
while she stimulates our search for it, she acts 
in harmony with the inmost principles of our na- 
ture and wishes to secure for us the largest life 
of which we are capable? 

She has undoubtedly given us senses, organs 
and faculties for the reception of facts, and 
throughout her wide domain she has spread her 
facts before us in the greatest profusion, all of 
which are more or less interesting and more or 
less valuable to us. Also, she has both given 
us an ardent desire for the possession of facts 
and made the possession of facts an essential 
condition of all education and development. 

But on the other hand, she has plainly estab- 
lished a law which declares that man shall not 
live by facts alone. Ardent as may be our desire 



Essay on Truth. 19 

to compass the facts which the earth and the 
universe present to us, bare facts and laws would 
no more satisfy our minds and souls than the 
bare earth without trees or plants or grass or 
flowers would satisfy our eyes. We must think 
and feel and imagine and wonder and aspire as 
well as know. 

Perhaps the highest oflice of scientific facts is 
to open the doors of the unseen world to our 
thoughts and imaginations. 

When Jesus said, "Consider the lilies of the 
field how they grow/' he gave us no new facts; 
but what a world of thought and suggestion he 
presented to us. 

''Without a parable spake he not unto them," 
is written concerning this same Jesus — must not 
all teachers and prophets of Truth follow his 
example in greater or less measure? 

Hi^hlv as we mav admire the faculties within 
us by which we become acquainted with the facts 
and laws of the material world, our most god- 
like faculty is not perception or cognition, but 
Imagination ! 

If this be claiming too much, we may yet 
safely say that no system of education — or of 
religion — that ignores this faculty will accom- 
plish its object or prove itself worthy of any 
acceptation. 



20 Essay on Truth. 

All children delight in fairyland; and the ex- 
ercise of their imaginations with stories and le- 
gends and folk-lore is as necessary for their 
mental — and moral — development as the exer- 
cise of their bones and muscles is necessary for 
their physical development. As clearly as the 
wings of birds are made for flying, the minds of 
children are made to revel in the mysterious and 
incomprehensible. ''The sense of the marvelous 
in children/' says Charles Wagner, ''is the first 
form of that sense of the Infinite, without which 
a man is like a bird deprived of wings." 

Must we not attribute the intense curiosity 
of children and the interest which they manifest 
in Nature's phenomena to the appeal which all 
new facts make to their imaginations? We can 
not understand the ministry of Mother Nature, 
but we know how she loves little children, and 
is always ready to show them her beauty and 
glory and make them happy. And this for the 
same reason that she gives her light and warmth 
to the young plants and flowers — she wants 
them to grow ! 

What is it that gives children such relish in 
play? Plainly it is not alone the physical ex- 
ercise that sends the blood on such a rapid course 
through their veins; for they also enjoy those 
plays in which they find little or no physical ex- 



Essay on Truth. 21 

ercise. Is not their interest in play mainly due 
to the fact that they nearly always bring their 
imaginations into exercise by ''playing" school 
or church or store or some other occupation of 
their elders? 

And is not the boy who bestrides a broom- 
stick and calls it his ''horse/' doing something 
more than amusing himself ? And is the little girl 
who fondles and caresses her waxen doll so 
fondly and bestows so much care and attention 
upon it merely going through a process of make- 
believe? Rather, is she not quickening the 
germs of her inmost being and in some measure 
preparing herself for the motherhood which is 
her high and holy calling? 

Heaven pity all those children whose parents 
are too poor or too stolid and indifferent to give 
them the opportunity for play which their na- 
tures require. Heaven also pity those children 
of the rich who are denied that free play with 
other children which is the natural birthright of 
every child born into the world. 

The fiction of "Santa Claus" not only gives 
children the intensest pleasure by surrounding 
their Christmas presents with a halo of mystery ; 
but as the pleasing illusion is gradually dispelled, 
they learn to appreciate the real Santa Claus, 
whose home is in the hearts of their parents and 



22 Essay on Truth. 

friends, and they also learn or may learn how it 
is more blessed to give than to receive. A most 
wonderful moral teacher and exemplar is this 
same Santa Claus. 

And are we not all children in Nature's vast 
nursery and playground, with imaginations to be 
exercised, feelings to be aroused and mental and 
moral natures to be developed? And is it not 
the office of all science and all art — and of Re- 
ligion as well — to perform this ministry in our 
behalf? As certainly as our bodies are to be 
nourished by the fruits of the earth our spirits 
are to be nourished and expanded by the mys- 
teries of the unseen and the unknown. Is not 
mystery the native air of our souls? 

"Oh, blest of Heaven, whom not the languid songs 
Of luxury, the siren, not the bribes 
Of sordid wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils 
Of pageant honor can seduce to leave 
Those ever-blooming sweets, which from the store 
Of Nature fair Imagination culls 
To charm the enlivened soul. 

♦ ^ :(c :(c ♦ 

"And thus the men 
Whom Nature's works can charm with God himself 
Hold converse, grow familiar day by day 
With his conceptions, act upon his plans, 
And form to his, the relish of their souls." 

Therefore we do not hesitate to say that if 
Nature permitted us to know all that we desire 
to know — if she had no holy of holies which we 



Essay on Truth. 25 

are not permitted to enter — the zest of our ex- 
istence would be gone forever. If we could 
pierce the mysteries of Nature's manifold pro- 
cesses — if we could understand the unceasing 
motions, and changes which are everywhere pres- 
ent to our eyes — if we could comprehend the 
origin of the universe or the essence of a grain 
of sand — that pursuit of truth which is one of 
the highest satisfactions of the soul would be 
our prerogative no longer. 

Some one has said that if he could capture the 
bird of truth he would immediately release it 
that he might have the privilege of pursuing it 
again. 

Let us therefore rejoice in the assurance that 
Mother Nature knows what manner of persons 
we are, and that all her mysteries and illusions 
are but proofs that she cares for us as wisely 
and faithfully as she cares for the flowers of the 
field and garden and the trees of the forest. In 
her manner of hiding her secrets from our eyes 
she seeks not merely to stimulate our imagina- 
tions, but all the faculties of which we are pos- 
sessed. If she chastens our curiosity, it is be- 
cause she recognizes our reason and moral sense, 
and seeks through these princples of our na- 
ture to clothe us with her own likeness and 
image. If she refuses to give our senses the full 



24 Essay on Truth. 

satisfaction which they crave, it is because she 
would Hft us above the world of sense and give 
us a home in that ideal world which is our birth- 
right and heritage. 

From all these things we may both learn that 
there is a spirit in man that transcends his bodily 
senses, but that Nature herself is spiritual as well 
as material ! 

"Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand. 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

**These are thy glorious works. Parent of good, 
Almighty ! Thine this universal frame. 
Thus wondrous fair ; Thyself how wondrous then, 
Unspeakable ! who sittest above the heavens. 
To us invisible, or dimly seen 
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare 
Thy goodness beyond thought and power divine." 

Henry Drummond might well have followed 
his work on "Natural Law in the Spiritual 
World" with another on ''Spiritual Law in the 
Natural World." 



Essay on Truth. 25 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 

Not only must the facts of science receive the 
breath of Hfe from our imaginations, but science 
herself must be idealized (spiritualized) before 
we can appreciate her message. How little profit 
we would find in chemical analysis, if the secrets 
of every atom did not rebuke our pride and teach 
us that humility of spirit which becomes all seek- 
ers after light and truth. And how little profit 
we would find in the study of Astronomy, if the 
mysteries of this science did not suggest to us 
that there is a gravitation of the stars for our 
souls as well as a gravitation of the earth for our 
bodies ! 

Are Esop's fables true or false? Is there any 
more certain truth under the sun than we find in 
the parables of Jesus, in the plays of Shakespeare, 
in the poetry of Milton and Dante and Goethe, 
and in the novels of Charles Dickens and 
Victor Hugo and George Eliot? Did any 
clearer message ever come from heaven to earth 
than the singing of Jenny Lind ? Do our obliga- 
tions to physical science exceed our obligations 



26 Essay on Truth. 

to the arts of the painter and the sculptor? In 
fine, what are Fiction and Music and Poetry and 
Painting and Sculpture and Love but the better 
angels of our nature, whereby we are caught up 
into the third heaven where we see and hear the 
things which it is not lawful for us to utter ? 

"The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 

heaven ; 
And as Imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy Nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

Does not the novel of high imagination — 
when it is truly artistic — both interest us the 
more and convey the larger measure of truth to 
our minds from the fact that it is a creation of 
the author, and not a mere narrative of actual 
events ? Are not the idealistic school of novelists 
more true to nature and to life than the realists, 
who claim that they always picture life to us 
exactly as it is? 

Why is Dickens' "Micawber" so intensely in- 
teresting to us? Plainly, we think, because the 
genius of the great novelist has given us a pic- 
ture not merely of one Micawber, but of all the 
Micawbers that ever lived. 

In ''Uncle Tom's Cabin" the account of "Eliza'^ 
crossing the Ohio river on cakes of ice in the 



Essay on Truth. 27 

dead of a winter's night with her child in her 
arms has thrilled the souls of thousands and thou- 
sands of readers, although the actual fact is be- 
yond the range of possibility. Which is to say, 
that the story is a true one in a higher sense than 
that of mere fact; for in this scene Mrs. Stowe 
gave us a picture not of one slave mother's suffer- 
ing, but of the suffering experienced by all the 
slave mothers of the south. 

Bunyan's 'Tilgrim's Progress" was given to 
the world ''under the similitude of a dream f but 
what a panorama of life it presents to our view. 
And this because its allegorical characters are 
all bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And 
may not the same be said of Homer's heroes and 
Milton's angels, and all the forms and shapes of 
men that Dante saw in his Paradise, in his Pur- 
gatory and in his Inferno ? 

''What do you learn from Paradise Lost?" says 
Coleridge. "Nothing. What do you learn from a 
cookery book? Something new, something you 
did not know before, in every paragraph. But 
would you therefore put the cookery book on a 
higher level of estimation than the divine poem? 
What you owe to Milton is not a mere knowl- 
edge of facts; what you owe to him is power — 
that is, exercise and expansion to your own lat- 
ent capacity of sympathy with the Infinite, where 



28 Essay on Truth. 

every pulse and each separate influx is a step up- 
ward, ascending as upon Jacob's ladder from 
earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth." 

"The greatest painters have rarely stooped to 
the painting of landscape/' says a distinguished 
author and historian, "since no imaginary land- 
scape can surpass what everybody has seen in 
nature. But what mortal woman ever expressed 
the ethereal beauty of a Madonna of Raphael or 
Murillo? What man ever possessed such a sub- 
limity of aspect and figure as the creations of 
Michael Angelo ? A beggar arose from his hand 
the patriarch of poverty, the hump of his dwarf 
is impressed with dignity; his infants are men, 
and his men are giants. In his hands sculpture 
became not demoralizing and Pagan, but in- 
structive and exalting from his grand concep- 
tions of dignity and power.'' 

Thus we may see that in all art and literature 
— may we not also say in physical science ? — 
the letter often kills, while the spirit always gives 
life and truth ! 



Essay on Truth. 29 



CHAPTER VI. 

WHAT MAKES KNOWLEDGE MOST VALUABLE TO 

US? 

It has already been stated that in the study of 
Geometry we can only produce the symbols of 
the lines, squares, circles, triangles and other 
figures which we are considering. Not only is 
this the case, but every concrete line that we may 
use contradicts the definition of a line, since the 
concrete line has both length and breadth, where- 
as the real or abstract line has the dimension of 
length alone. But these facts in no wise detract 
from the value of the mental discipline and de- 
velopment which may be attained by the faith- 
ful student who uses these symbols as if they 
were the real figures which are in his mind, al- 
though the knowledge of objective facts that he 
gains is almost infinitesimal. 

And what we have said in regard to the study 
of Geometry is true in some measure of all 
studies whatsoever. That knowledge is always 
of most worth to us which is acquired by the 
highest exercise of our faculties. The scholar- 
ship which consists in an accumulation of facts 



30 Essay on Truth. 

without a corresponding expansion of mind and 
soul does not deserve the name of scholarship. 

It is possible for us to obtain a knowledge of 
the law of gravitation — that all material bodies 
attract one another with a force that is in direct 
proportion to their mass of matter and in inverse 
proportion to the squares of their distances — 
with no more enlargement of our mental facul- 
ties than we can obtain by reading some inter- 
esting item in a daily newspaper; but how the 
soul of Isaac Newton must have risen to the 
skies when he made this grand discovery; for 
it was not revealed to him until he had long 
sat at the feet of Nature and became acquainted 
with her very soul. 

Any one who is versed in Arithmetic may learn 
Kepler's laws of planetary motion with no per- 
ceptible increase of his mental stature ; but it is 
said that when after many years of study and in- 
vestigation, these laws became fully established 
in Kepler's mind, such was his rapture of feel- 
ing that he exclaimed, "O God, I have been 
thinking Thy thoughts !" 



Essay on Truth. 31 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE HIGH ART OF TEACHING. 

The improved "methods'' and other improve- 
ments in the theory and practice of teaching for 
which our age is so justly distinguished are far 
enough from perfection, and are far from mark- 
ing as great progress in the educational world 
as is claimed for them ; but out of them all has 
come — and this we must consider their chief vir- 
tue — a recognition of the fact that the living 
teacher is greater than all methods and systems 
of instruction — yea, greater than all sciences! 
The teacher who is indeed "up" in his profes- 
sion is not only provided with a good store of 
knowledge, but he makes all facts and all sciences 
contribute to the edification of himself and his 
pupils ; he transforms "dead languages'' into 
living ones ; he creates such an atmosphere about 
him that whatever knowledge he imparts becomes 
noble and inspiring and therefore "practical" in 
the highest sense. Such a teacher ever realizes 
that he cannot separate his personality from his 
instruction; and since he must impress himself 
(his character) on his pupils, he realizes that he 



32 Essay on Truth. 

is bound not only to present to them a character 
without spot or blemish, but as far as possible to 
make himself ''persona grata" to all of them. Is 
it not desirable that children should love the 
man or woman who teaches them as well as the 
instruction they receive? 

While the true teacher remembers that his 
pupils are the subjects of his authority and in- 
struction, he also remembers that they are his 
fellow-beings as well as his pupils ; and there- 
fore he ever seeks to establish a friendly — and 
off-duty — acquaintance with them, to the end 
that he may know all sides of their characters, 
may know them as persons as well as pupils, and 
to the end that teacher and pupils may like and 
respect each other and may constantly learn from 
each other! 

''If any one can communicate himself, he can 
teach, but not by words. There is no teaching 
until the pupil is brought into the same state or 
principle in which you are; a transfusion takes 
place; he is you, and you are he; then is a 
teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad 
company can he quite lose the benefit." 

Is it not time that this personal acquaintance 
and attachment between teacher and pupils 
should be recognized by normal educators and 
writers on Pedagogy as an essential feature of the 



Essay on Truth. 33 

teacher's art? (If any considerable number of 
them do so recognize it we are not aware of the 
fact.) 

If good teaching means ''character-building" 
as well as giving instruction, does not the teacher 
need to know the children w^hom he teaches, and 
be known of them as certainly as the preacher 
needs to know the people to whom he preaches 
and be known of them? If mutual acquaintance 
and cordial sympathy is so desirable between 
parents and children, is it not equally desirable 
between teachers and pupils? And should not 
all teachers therefore beware of the leaven of 
officialism and ever cherish the leaven of sym~ 
pathy and companionship? 

Thus speaks the author of ''The Simple Life''^ 
on this point : "Let us make an effort to brighten 
the morning of our children's days. Let us call in 
our sons whom our gloomy interiors send out 
into the street and our daughters moping in 
dismal solitude. Let us raise good humor to 
the height of an institution. Let the schools, 
too, do their part. Let teachers and pupils meet 
together oftener for amusement; it will be so 
much the better for serious work. There is no 
such aid to understanding one's teacher as to 
have laughed in his or her company; and con- 
versely, to be well known and understood a pupil 



34 Essay on Truth. 

must be met elsewhere than in recitation and ex- 
amination." 

Prof. Charles Northend has this to say con- 
cerning the teacher's interest in the amusements 
of his pupils: ''By manifesting a judicious in- 
terest in the recreations of his pupils and ex- 
hibiting a true sympathy with them in their 
daily lives, the teacher may enlist their feelings 
in favor of school duties. Let every teacher aim 
to cultivate in children a taste for those recrea- 
tions which are not only innocent in themselves, 
but harmless in their tendency. Let him give 
a smiling countenance and an approving expres- 
sion to all such amusements and thus give evi- 
dence that he sympathizes with his pupils and 
takes pleasure in their enjoyments.'' 

To this it might be added that it would be well 
for the teacher to participate in the amusements 
of his pupils more or less — if he can do so with- 
out spoiling their fun! 

Breathes there a teacher under the sun whose 
''dignity'' would suffer from such a cordial rela- 
tion with his pupils as we are advocating? 

Rather would not such a relation both enlarge 
the soul of every teacher and make his work 
much easier and more useful than it would other- 
wise be? 



Essay on Truth. 35 

And would it be possible for any real teacher 
to become ''too familiar'' with his or her pupils 
or too well acquainted with them? If such a 
thing is really possible, it only happens once in 
a thousand years ! 

We believe no one has ever claimed that par- 
ents and children can be too friendly and fa- 
miliar with each other. 

Let us repeat then, that true teaching is far 
more than the conveying of instruction from one 
person to another. It is the contact of mind with 
mind, of thought with thought, of feeling with 
feeling, of life with life, of soul with soul. 
. And as a current of electricity can not be gen- 
erated without the action of both a positive and a 
negative pole, neither can the highest and best 
work of any teacher be performed, unless his 
pupils are made partakers and factors of his 
work and unless he strives to become like them 
as well to have them become Hke him. 

"At the same time came the disciples unto 
Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the king- 
dom of heaven? 

"And Jesus called a little child unto him, and 
set him in the midst of them, 

"And said, \'erily, I say unto you, except ye 
be converted and become as little children, ye 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven!'' 



36 Essay on Truth. 

Thus sang the poet Longfellow: 

"Come to me, O ye children ! 
For I hear you at your play; 
And the questions that perplexed me 
Have vanished quite away. 

"Ah, what would the world be to us. 
If the children were no more? 
We should dread the desert behind us 
Worse than the darkness before ! 

"Come to me, O ye children ! 
And whisper in my ear 
What the birds and the winds are singing 
In your sunny atmosphere. 

"For what are all our contrivings 
And the wisdom of our books. 

When compared with your caresses 
And the gladness of your looks. 

"Ye are better than all the ballads 
That ever were sung or said; 
For ye are living poems, 
And all the rest are deadT 



Essay on Truth. 37 



CHAPTER VIIL 

CONCERNING MEDICAL PRACTICE — WITH SOME 

REMARKS ON '^CHRISTIAN SCIENCE^' AND 

KINDRED SYSTEMS. 

The medical profession have not yet eliminated 
disease from the world nor outgrown the 
current superstition that the maladies of our 
bodies can be cured with poisonous drugs; but 
we can hardly overestimate the healing power 
exercised by the members of this profession 
when they appreciate the virtue of ''suggestion" 
and possess the personal magnetism which in- 
spires their patients with hope and confidence. 
The time would fail us to tell how many cases of 
disease they cure in this way — in spite of their 
remedies ! Much might also be said of the in- 
direct or symbolic virtue of materia medica as a 
means of securing that mysterious influence over 
sick people's imaginations — and nerves — which 
is so essential to the physician's usefulness. 

May we not hope that in the near future all 
medical practitioners will become prophets of 
health and heralds of the light and knowledge 
which the people so sadly need? Let us hope 
that the day is not far distant when they will 



38 Essay on Truth. 

realize that Nature's remedies for the diseases of 
our flesh are abundance of light and pure air, the 
liberal use of water, a moderate and proper diet, 
and a firm belief that we are all children of health, 
and not children of disease ! 

But they will never become the prophets and 
heralds that we hope to see them as long as they 
adhere to the system of administering substances 
that are foreign to the human organism and give 
so little attention to the remedies which Nature 
has provided for us almost without money and 
without price. They will never become such her- 
alds and prophets, until they realize that as most 
diseases can be traced to the lack of proper di- 
gestion, so they can only be cured through the 
process of digestion and assimilation, and until 
they realize that disordered and enfeebled stom- 
achs do not need drugging and ''dosing," but 
rest and care and protection. Such stomachs 
need protection from over-eating and from all 
preparations of food that excite an abnormal ap- 
petite. They need protection from alcoholic 
stimulants, from draughts of ice water, and from 
the thousand and one ''laxatives," "purgatives" 
and "tonics" — and various "proprietary medi- 
cines" whose chief ingredient is bad whisky — 
that play such mischief with peoples' nerves and 
digestive organs, and keep an army of physicians 



Essay on Truth. 39 

busy prescribing for them at all hours of the 
day and night. 

O, that all physicians would teach their 
patients to sit down at the feet of Mother Nature 
and observe all the laws, physical and mental, 
which she has established for our health and 
healing. What miracles of healing they might 
then perform. How easy it would then be to 
"stamp out" smallpox, scarlet fever and the other 
contagious devils that afflict the people so sorely I 

In this connection let us remark that we doubt 
whether any physician can do his best work and 
render his largest possible service to his fellow- 
men, if he is eager and determined to become 
rich from the practice of his profession. Should 
not the motives and purposes of the physical 
healer be as altruistic as those of the moral and 
spiritual healer? 



What shall we here say concerning "Christian 
Science," "Mental Science" and the various 
"Faith Cures" now in vogue that are seeking to 
heal all our diseases without the use of medicine 
or any "material" remedies? In spite of the 
many inconsistencies and contradictions and logi- 
cal "ad-absurdums" of these various schools, do 
they not all represent the power of the subjective 



40 Essay on Truth. 

over the objective and of the mental and spiritual 
over the material ? For this reason we must wel- 
come their appearance, believing that as the ex- 
ponents of so vital a principle they can not fail 
to promote the physical health of the people and 
exert a more or less beneficial influence on our 
moral and social life — in spite of the perversions 
which may attach to them. Although most of the 
claims made by these systems will not stand the 
test of inductive experiment or of logical analy- 
sis, so long as they remain true to the principle 
of which we have spoken, we must consider them 
not far from the kingdom of truth. We need not 
believe that there is no material world, or that 
our minds can overcome the essential conditions 
under which we live, or that ''miraculous'' power 
can be invoked for the healing of our diseases; 
but we can very rationally hold that the power 
of mind over matter has never been fully meas- 
ured, and that until the limits of this power are 
discovered, no one can tell how great an influ- 
ence our wills may exercise over our imaginations 
and nerves and through these over the circulation 
of our blood. Says Shakespeare : 

"When the mind Is quickened, out of doubt, 
The organs, though defunct and dead before, 
Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move 
With casted slough and fresh legerity." 



Essay on Truth. 41 

Because all diseases can not be cured through 
mental or moral processes, let us not conclude 
that such processes have no place in the healing 
art. At any rate we may hold fast to the belief 
that good health is our normal possession, and 
is worth striving after with all the powers of our 
minds, bodies and souls. 

The votaries of these systems will become more 
consistent and intelligent by and by. In due time 
they will learn that we can not make friends with 
Nature without respecting the physical senses she 
has given us as well as our mental and moral 
faculties. In due time they must needs recognize 
the fact that as most diseases are caused by the 
transgression of physical laws as well as by the 
failure of people to keep their mind and thoughts 
tinder proper discipline, so the prevention and 
cure of disease require a healthy state of mind 
and the observance of all the laws pertaining to 
our physical organization. They must needs 
modify their creeds so as to teach the importance 
of proper cleansing and breathing and eating and 
drinking and working and sleeping as well as 
thinking. 

Meantime let them spread their gospel of good 
health as far and wide as they please. It won't 
harm anybody! 



42 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ARE ALL MEN CREATED EQUAL? 

We Americans never grow weary of repeating 
the preamble to our Declaration of Independence, 
which declares that ''all men are created equal/' 
and we justly honor the fathers of our Republic 
who proclaimed this doctrine in the ears of man- 
kind, but how far is it sustained by the objective 
facts in the case? All men are not born equal 
in respect to natural capacity, or property, or op- 
portunities for action, or educational advantages, 
or even in respect to moral and religious priv- 
ileges ; and we think it would be very hard, if not 
impossible, to name any respect in which they 
actually come into the world on an equal basis. 
Our immortal Declaration of Independence will 
not hold good in the light of objective fact ; but 
let us not conclude that it will be found wanting 
when tried by a higher and more vital test. 

For as an ideal principle the statement that "all 
men are created equal'' belongs to the highest 
order of truth. Not only was our government 
solemnly ''dedicated" to this principle — see Lin- 
coln's Gettysburg address — but it is a principle 



Essay on Truth. 43 

which should pervade all our legislation and the 
administration of all our political, social and re- 
ligious institutions. And wherever on land or 
sea our flag is raised, this principle should be 
inscribed on its folds, to be read and believed by 
all the nations of the earth. For verily this truth 
has come down to us from God out of heaven; 
and we should guard it as sacredly as the child- 
ren of Israel ever guarded the ark of their cove- 
nant. 

Only by cherishing this sentiment in our 
breasts and giving it the largest possible applica- 
tion can we hope to overcome the evil tendencies 
of officialism and commercialism and militarism. 
Let the officers of our army and navy learn that 
their blood is in no wise superior to that of the 
men under their command ; let our landlords and 
other capitalists learn that although they are per- 
mitted to enjoy and control the products of other 
people's labor, those other people are creatures of 
the same flesh and blood as themselves; let all 
civil officials learn that they are the servants, not 
the masters or superiors of the public; let the 
principle of equality be taught in our schools and 
churches and at our firesides, and let no one dare 
to assert that the Golden Rule can not be applied 
to "business'' or to "practical politics." 

When we reflect that in this favored land of 



44 Essay on Truth. 

ours we already have our millionaires and multi- 
millionaires and bid fair to have our billionaires 
and multi-billionaires in the near future — that 
the wealth of the country is concentrating in the 
hands of a few '^captains of industry'' with the 
most frightful rapidity — that political platforms 
and nominations for public offices are dictated 
by party "bosses" great and small — that trusts 
and combines are controlling the larger portion of 
our commercial enterprises and are certainly seek- 
ing the control of all elections and all legislation 
— we can not be free from misgivings concerning 
the application of this principle in the years that 
are to come. But let us not despair of the Repub- 
lic ; for verily the souls of Thomas Jefferson and 
Abraham Lincoln shall go marching on, and 
^'government of the people, by the people and for 
the people shall not perish from the earth !" 

"What constitutes a state? 
Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate; 
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; 

Not bays and broad-armed ports, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; 

No — men, high-minded men! 

These constitute a state !" 



Essay on Truth. 45 



CHAPTER X. 

CERTAIN ILLUSIONS AND THEIR USES AND 
PURPOSES. 

The illusions, physical and psychological, to 
which mankind are subject may not be as numer- 
ous as the sands on the seashore; but it would 
require many volumes to recount and describe 
them all. 

Let us look at some of the most general illu- 
sions pertaining to human life : 

I. The desire to acquire material wealth is 
so nearly universal that we may pronounce it 
instinctive ; and no small fraction of mankind are 
seeking the gratification of this desire with hope 
and confidence. But how few of them are suc- 
ceeding in their object; and in the nature of the 
case how impossible it is for all of them to suc- 
ceed. 

Is not commercial life as essential a conflict 
as is military life? 

Let us suppose that the capacity of all per- 
sons in respect to this object were the same, and 
that there was no difference in the conditions 
under which they entered the contest — would 
we not see the failure of all and the success of 



46 Essay on Truth. 

none? Or let us even suppose that all people 
would determine to save a substantial fraction 
of their incomes — would not business of all 
kinds be speedily paralyzed? Is it not an essen- 
tial condition of general prosperity that the body 
of the people will spend all they earn ? 

However earnestly we may deprecate the ac- 
cumulation of great fortunes, we must not close 
our eyes to the fact that the success of the few 
is a stimulus and inspiration to the many, and 
that the activity of the many makes for civiliza- 
tion and social progress. When Patrick Henry 
said, 'Tt is natural for man to indulge in the illu- 
sions of hope," he might have added that human 
progress is largely promoted by these illusions. 

But what a lesson is here, not merely for the 
Rockefellers and Goulds and Morgans and Van- 
derbilts, but for all persons who may be counted 
successful in their pursuit of wealth. If those 
who fail in this pursuit need to realize that life 
does not consist in financial success, and that the 
highest order of manhood may be developed and 
sustained amid the very ashes of poverty and evil 
fortune, how much more should the successful 
ones realize that all their wealth — except the 
small fraction of it which they themselves have 
actually produced — has come out of the labor 
and sweat and failures and misfortunes of 



Essay on Truth. 47 

other people! How easy it is for any one to 
"make money'' when he can appropriate to him- 
self the first-fruits of the labor of hundreds and 
thousands of his fellow-men! 

Will rich people ever learn the lesson of hu- 
mility and obligation which these facts suggest 
to them? They surely ought to learn that their 
wealth — no matter how it has been acquired — 
is not their own, and that they must make them- 
selves the stewards and servants of society, if 
their "success'' is to be essentially profitable to 
themselves or to their children and children's 
children. 

2. Do not all persons, from the child in the 
cradle to the old man or woman trembling on the 
edge of the grave desire freedom of every kind? 
And are we not all striving to secure the largest 
possible measure of it? Do we not also believe 
that without the enjoyment of freedom our lives 
would not be worth living? 

There is something about Law of every kind 
that galls and oppresses us. If we were con- 
scious of the law of gravitation every moment, 
our lives would be unendurable. Is not our in- 
stinctive love of locomotion due in some measure 
to our desire to escape the consciousness of our 
subjection to this law and make-believe that we 
can overcome it? There is something more than 



48 Essay on Truth. 

the idea of utilit\' in the trolley car and the steam 
car and steamship — and also in the air ship 
in which we expect to travel around the world 
in the future. How earnestly we all desire both 
to be free and to feel free? And yet how little 
actual objective freedom we can secure for our- 
selves. It would almost seem that the sense of 
freedom is all that is vouchsafed us. 

But let us not conclude on this account that 
Xature is mocking us withal ; for here as else- 
where we may see the marks of her great love 
and wisdom. The lesson for us to learn is that 
all our freedom must be luzuful freedom, and that 
only by a proper recognition of the laws to which 
we are subject and a cheerful submission to them 
can we make our freedom of any value to us. 
Even our sense of freedom must be united with 
a sense of dut\' and obligation. 

3. The blue canopy over our heads that w^e 
call the sky-, and whose beauty we never cease 
to admire, may be taken as an illustration of that 
gilded canvas of the future which Xature spreads 
before our eyes — for what purpose ? Manifestly 
that she may inspire us with hope and impart to 
us such activity of mind and body as will make 
it worth w^hile for us to live. How unspeakably 
sad must any one's life be who can see no vision 
of brighter days and hours than he now enjoys! 



Essay on Truth. 49 

And what would become of our agriculture 
and commerce and governments and social and 
religious institutions, if we could no longer be- 
lieve or make-believe that by our mental and 
physical exertions and the changes we are per- 
mitted to make in external conditions, we can 
essentially increase our happiness and well-be- 
ing? How soon would the human races perish 
from the earth, if this blessed illusion were en- 
tirely dispelled from our minds ! Nay, it is not 
all illusion ! 

4. And what shall we say concerning the de- 
sire and hope that burns in so many breasts — 
called by Henry George ''the passion of passions 
and hope of hopes" — that we may leave the 
world better than we found it, even if we can not 
remove from it all the evils to which our race is 
subject? Ah, this problem of evil — must it re- 
main with us forever and a day? Is there to be 
no end to the meanness and misery and moral 
degradation that yet remain in the earth, in spite 
of all the reforms and evolutions that mark the 
history of our race? Shall we ever see the ''gol- 
den age'^ of the philosophers or the ^'millenium'^ 
of Christian sages and prophets ? 

There is no answer to these questions except 
such answer as each one of us may find for him- 
self — and in himself! Each one of us must 



60 Essay on Truth. 

learn not only that the knowledge of good and 
evil — see Genesis in: 5 — makes us like the 
gods, but that only by the eomprehension and 
mastery of evil — by wrestling with it and over- 
coming it — can we prove ourselves worthy of 
the natures with which we are endowed. 

i\[eantime let us see to it that this trial of our 
faith worketh patience, and patience experience, 
and experience hope, and that our hope maketh 
us not ashamed. \Miatever be our view of the 
evil now existing in the world, let us ever look 
for brighter days to come, even as wt look 
for the rising- sun everv morning. Let us not 
put away our heavenly vision of the future or 
prove disobedient unto it : for verily — 

"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again; 
The eternal years of God are hers ; 
But Error wounded writhes with pain, 
And dies among his worshipers !" 

And in the words of the poet Lowell: 

** Truth forever on the scaffold, 
Wrong forever on the throne ! 
But ihaT scaffold sways the future; 

And behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow. 
Keeping watch above his own !" 



Essay on Truth. 51 



CHAPTER XI. 

CONCERNING THE WORLD's PHILOSOPHIES. 

We have already stated that there is very Httle 
actual or objective knowledge to be gained from 
the Study of the world's philosophies ; but let us 
not therefore conclude that they are all fruitless 
abstractions or vain speculations concerning the 
things that can not be known, or that they are 
wholly unsuited to our practical life. While 
these philosophies have failed to pierce the re- 
cesses of the human soul as signally as physical 
science has failed to solve the mysteries of the 
material world, it would be impossible to esti- 
mate the activity of mind and the development of 
human faculties which they have promoted as 
well as the influence they have exerted on the 
political, social and religious institutions of the 
world. 

In opposition to those writers who claim that 
the various systems of philosophy bore no fndt 
— see Macaulay's essay on Bacon — until Bacon 
and his inductive method appeared, we need only 
quote what James Freeman Clarke in his ''Ten 
Great Religions'' says concerning ancient Greece, 



52 Essay on Truth. 

which was certainly the cradle of ancient philos- 
ophy, if not of modern philosophy as well : 

"Nowhere in the earth before or since has man 
been educated into such a wonderful perfection, 
such an entire unfolding of himself as in Greece. 
There every human tendency and faculty of soul 
and body opened in symmetrical proportion. 
That small country, so insignificant on the map 
of Europe, almost invisible on the map of the 
world, carried human art to perfection in a few 
short centuries. Everything in Greece was ar- 
tistic, because everything was finished and per- 
fected. In that garden of the world ripened the 
masterpieces of poetry and the masterpieces of 
history, of oratory, of mathematics, of architect- 
ure, of sculpture, and of painting. Greece de- 
veloped every form of human government; and 
in Greece were fought and won the great battles 
of the world. Before Greece everything in lit- 
erature and art was a rude and imperfect at- 
tempt; since Greece everything has been a rude 
and imperfect imitation.'^ 

It can not be maintained that the high civiliza- 
tion of Greece was wholly due to the speculations 
and discussions of her philosophers, but surely 
philosophy was one of the most vital factors in 
that civilization. A history of Greece with no 
account of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle with 



Essay on Truth. 53 

their predecessors and followers would be very 
much like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left 
out. 

''The progress of philosophy from Thales to 
Plato," says Dr. John Lord, ''is the most stupen- 
dous triumph of the human intellect. The rea- 
son of man soared to the loftiest heights it has 
ever attained. It cast its searching eye into the 
most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the 
human mind^ and exhausted all the subjects 
which dialectical subtlety ever raised. Who can 
not see in the inquiries and dialectics of the old 
philosophers a magnificent triumph of human ge- 
nius, such as has been exhibited in no other de- 
partment of human science? If any intellectual 
pursuit has gone round in perpetual circles ap- 
parently incapable of progression or rest, it is 
that glorious study of philosophy, which has 
tasked the mightiest intellects of the world and 
which, progressive or not, will never be re- 
linqished without the loss of that which is most 
valuable in human culture.'' 

That modern philosophy has exerted an 
equally beneficial influence on modern civilization 
will not be questioned by any one familiar with 
modern history. Are not philosophical specula- 
tion and scientific investigation as vitally related 
as the Siamese twins ? 



54 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONCERNING MORALITY. 

The moral codes and systems of the world 
have not escaped the imperfection which belongs 
to all things human; but let us rejoice that the 
rules of our conduct can not be made so precise 
and definite that he who runneth may always 
read and understand them. For if all our con- 
duct were definitely prescribed for us, we would 
cease to be moral beings, if we did not cease to 
be intelligent ones. Moral science, above all 
other sciences, is subjective. The highest moral- 
ity can only be attained when we choose and pre- 
fer the right with motives that are altogether 
righteous ; and in all cases it is desirable that we, 
should see the right course with our own eyes. 
It would be ''proving too much" to maintain that 
in respect to his moral conduct every man should 
be a law unto himself ; but we do insist that there 
should be a wide range of freedom and discretion 
for each individual — else reason and conscience 
would both be stifled. As no one could become a 
rapid and graceful walker whose steps were all 
according to a strict mathematical measurement, 



Essay on Truth. 55 

so no one could become truly moral by merely be- 
lieving some code of morals or strictly following 
some prescribed course of conduct. True moral- 
ity, we might say, does not consist in walking on 
a single straight line, but in keeping the proper 
balance between two lines, the one on the right 
and the other on the left. And we must not only 
learn to walk in this manner, but also learn how 
and when and where to draw the lines. 

In vain shall we seek for a defmite and abso- 
lute line of distinction between right and wrong, 
so that we may distinguish the one from the 
other, as a chemist distinguishes the compounds 
in his laboratory; but we shall not seek in vain 
for that sense of right and wrong, that divine 
law which has been written on the tables of our 
hearts and made a part of our inmost natures. 

Here, we fear, we must join issue with those 
philosophers who make the ''data of ethics'' to 
consist in our experience of those acts which 
give pleasure or pain to ourselves and others, 
thus representing our moral ideas as somewhat 
extraneous to our natures, instead of tracing 
them to the heart of our being. Especially do 
they ignore or seem to ignore the law or princi- 
ple of self-discipline without which there can be 
no moral character and hardly any moral con- 
duct. 



56 Essay on Truth. 

It is in fulfilling this law of self-discipline that 
we find the high office of our reason and con- 
science, which office we can not fail to recognize 
without doing ourselves the most serious injury 
and grieving that Spirit of Truth in which we 
have our moral being. 

And, paradoxical as it may seem, when we 
most faithfully discipline ourselves, we feel the 
greater need of ''the Power not ourselves that 
makes for righteousness,'' and open our eyes to 
that light which is for every man that cometh 
into the world. 

''Work out your own salvation — for it is God 
that worketh in you," wrote St. Paul to the Phi- 
lippians. 

"My Father worketh hitherto — and I work," 
said Jesus the Christ. 

We will not contend that our reason and con- 
science are "infallible" in the full sense of that 
term; but they are certainly the guides which 
Heaven has given us, and according to the high- 
est principles of our nature we must be directed 
by them as certainly as our bodily actions have to 
be directed by our eyesight and other senses. 

All moral codes and rules and "command- 
ments" must pass through the crucible of our 
reason that we may determine their virtue and 
applicability by whatever process we deem most 
reliable. 



Essay on Truth. 57 

"Try the spirits, whether they be of God," says 
the Apostle John. 

*'He who would gather immortal palms,'' says 
Emerson, ''must not be hindered by the name of 
goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. 
In the last analysis nothing is sacred but the in- 
tegrity of our own mind." 

The essence of morality is as impossible of 
definition as the essence of life itself; but each 
one of us must imbibe that essence before the 
seal of true morality can be stamped on our fore- 
heads. It may even be possible for any one to 
keep all the commandments of the law and yet 
lack the inward principle or germ which is found 
in every truly moral character. 

A catalogue of all the virtues possessed by 
Abraham Lincoln would give us no adequate 
idea of his character; for the soul of goodness 
that was in him defies analysis or definition. And 
what is true concerning Lincoln is true concern- 
ing all other good men and women, saying noth- 
ing about the goodness which we would fain be- 
lieve is to be found in all persons whatsoever. 

And even if it were possible to reduce the 
principles of morality to definite and fixed rules; 
we would still find those rules crossing each other 
at right angles and not infrequently meeting in 
direct conflict, so that reason would still have to 



58 Essay on Truth. 

be exercised in harmonizing and applying them. 
We are not here speaking of questions in mere 
casuistry — whose name is legion — but of those 
direct, practical questions which come to us in 
our every day life and appeal to the clearest 
moral sense that is in us. And the more complex 
human society becomes and the higher civilization 
we attain, the more numerous will be the ques- 
tions that cannot be answered correctly, unless 
our moral sense is honored as it should be. 
Where there is no vision the people perish ! 

Hence the importance of our cherishing the 
highest moral ideals and having within us that 
principle or soul of truth, which no man can de- 
fine, but which all men recognize when it finds 
its proper expression in our words and deeds. 

The man who possesses this principle as a part 
of his nature may not be able to transmute all 
the falsehood and error that he finds into truth 
or all the evil he finds into good ; but he and he 
alone can see the soul of truth in things erro- 
neous and the soul of good in things evil. Such 
a man can transfigure the world in which he lives 
with the light of his own soul and make it — to 
himself — a moral and spiritual world; he can 
subdue the very powers of Nature and press 
them into the service of his moral being ; he can 
cause the ground under his feet to be firmer and 



Essay on Truth. 59 

more abiding, and the stars above his head to 
shine with a brighter Hght. 

These points, we think, are worthy of serious 
consideration in teaching morahty to others — 
and are especially important in teaching it to chil- 
dren. It is very easy to recite the ''Ten Com- 
mandments'' and other moral maxims to chil- 
dren, and when we have sufficient authority over 
them, we can compel good behavior on their 
part; but if we want to instil moral principles 
into their natures, we must bring their moral 
faculties into exercise. This we consider as cer- 
tain a fact as that we can not teach them to walk 
without exercising their bones and muscles or to 
think without exercising their mental faculties. 

To teach morality to children, then, we must 
not only inspire them with such a love of the 
right that they will choose and prefer it, but we 
must quicken their moral powers, so they will be 
able to see the right path with their own eyes. 
We must educate — lead forth — their moral 
sense. We need hardly add that no one can teach 
morality to others, unless his own moral sense is 
pure and clear and active — ''for if the blind 
lead the blind, they both shall fall into the ditch." 

Does this argument unduly emphasize the sub- 
jective side of morality and righteousness? 



60 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE MYSTERIES OF RELIGION BUT MAN HAS A 

RELIGIOUS NATURE. 

Shall we dare to enter the temple of Religion 
and inquire what light she can throw on our sub- 
ject? Here we not only find that language is in- 
adequate to the expression of our thoughts, but 
that it is well-nigh impossible to distinguish be- 
tween what we know on the one hand and what 
we think or feel or believe or desire on the other. 
When we seek to penetrate the counsels of In- 
finity and to solve the mysteries of the eternity 
behind us and the eternity before us as well as 
the mysteries of our present being, how little 
there is for us to know, and how much to believe, 
to admire, to reverence and adore! Surely in 
the presence of these mysteries, it is not the as- 
surance of knowledge that we need most, but 
the open mind, the bowed head, the pure and 
honest heart! 

On the other hand, let us remember — and here 
is a point on which too much emphasis can hard- 
ly be laid — that man has a religious nature which 
demands to be exercised as certainly as his body 
and mind cry out for the exercise and aliment 



Essay on Truth. 61 

they need. As our eyes can not be satisfied with 
the beauties and glories of the earth, but must 
be raised to the skies and the stars, so this re- 
Hgious nature of ours ever desires and seeks a 
knowledge of our relation to the Infinite Power 
which has created the heavens and the earth. 

In his most admirable work entitled, 'Tirst 
Principles,'' Herbert Spencer has pointed out 
that Religion and Science have an everlasting 
basis of harmony in the mystery of the universe 
because no theory that has ever been devised to 
acount for its origin is even conceivable. All of 
which is very true; but it seems to us that our 
great philosopher might have gone still further 
and shown that the religious nature of man is a 
foundation on which Religion can ever stand 
with the fullest assurance, and a fact which 
science must ever recognize as certainly as she 
recognizes the law of gravitation. 

We may have to concede that the essence of 
the Power that animates and controls the universe 
is unknown and unknowable; but although we 
can not claim the perfect knowledge which we 
desire, that principle of belief — which is a part of 
our nature as certainly as is our eyesight or any 
other sense or faculty — asserts itself, and we de- 
mand the high privilege of faith and love and 
worship. 



62 Essay on Truth. 

Is it not as necessary for human beings to 
believe something as it is for them to eat some- 
thing? Would not the absence of all belief in 
our breasts be as fatal to our progress and de- 
velopment as the absence of all knowledge would 
be? In all the affairs of life do we not have to 
walk by faith as well as by sight? 

When Martin Luther made ''justification by 
faith" the keynote of the Protestant Reforma- 
tion, he not only proclaimed a fundamental doc- 
trine of the New Testament, but a fundamental 
principle of human nature. 

''Lord, 1 believe — help thou mine unbelief,'' has 
been the cry of many and many a soul through 
all the ages. 

How exceedingly unscientific and unphilosoph- 
ical must we consider the late Col. IngersoU and 
other "Agnostics," who denounce all religious 
faith as "superstition," while they ignore this 
fundamental principle of our nature and the vital 
need of its exercise. 

Equally unscientific and unphilosophical must 
we consider all religious teachers who can see 
no virtue in any creed or belief unless it is in 
strict accordance with objective facts. Since we 
can not obtain absolute knowledge of any thing 
whatever, and since even our relative knowledge 
is so exceedingly narrow, and since the greater 



Essay on Truth. 63 

part of this relative knowledge has been 
obtained by cherishing erroneous hypotheses, 
our beliefs concerning things unseen and un- 
known may surely accord with the principles 
of our nature whether they are sustained by ob- 
jective facts or not. And since we must work 
out our salvation with such imperfect knowl- 
edge, our beliefs can certainly be made valuable 
to us without being free from all mistakes or 
errors in respect to fact. We need not be — we 
can not be — as gods in respect to our beliefs any 
more than in respect to our knowledge. 

But while it is not essential that our beliefs 
should be infallible or ''inerrant'' in point of fact, 
it is essential that we should be very honest in 
our devotion to them and very careful concern- 
ing their influence on our characters ; for verily, 
it is how we believe rather than what we believe 
that makes us children of the truth and the 
light. 

We cannot share in the sentiment manifested 
in the statement of the historian Gibbon, that in 
the early years of the Roman empire ''all modes 
of worship were considered equally true by the 
people, equally false by the philosopher and 
equally useful by the magistrate;" but we do 
assert that the vital truth of all religions and re- 
ligious creeds does not so much depend on their 



64 Essay on Truth. 

correspondence with objective facts as on their 
correspondence with the principles of human na- 
ture and their adaptation to the wants of the 
people by whom they are cherished and pro- 
fessed. That religion is most true and most di- 
vine which ministers in largest measure to the 
reason and intelligence and manifold aspira- 
tions of the human soul. Only by this sign can 
we know that any religion is a message from 
Heaven and that its teachers are prophets of the 
Lord Most High ! 



Essay on Truth. 65 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CONCERNING THE WORLD's VARIOUS RELIGIONS 

An examination of the different religions of 
the world, we think, would reveal the fact that 
they all have their roots in hitman nature, and 
that their propagation and development are due 
to the vital relation which exists between their 
fundamental tenets and the life of our race, po- 
litical, moral and social. This statement might 
seem to be disproved by the fact that there has 
always been such a diversity of religions, and 
that all efforts to establish a universal religion 
have signally failed. But when we remember 
that there have always been nations and nations 
and peoples and peoples as well as religions and 
religions, and that these religions all represent 
in some measure the desires and aspirations of 
the ''genus homo," the natural or human basis 
that we have claimed for them is only made more 
certain. Nay ; the specific or differentiating fea- 
tures of each religion sustain our point by their 
special adaptation to the nation or people where 
that religion prevails. We might even go so far 
as to claim that each one of these religions is as 



66 Essay on Truth. 

nearly perfect a system of faith and practice as 
its adherents can assimilate. 

Let no one think, then, because there have al- 
ways been so many religions with conflicting 
claims and doctrines that all religions are cun- 
ningly devised fables or mere inventions of their 
founders. Rather, let us count them all as cries 
of the human soul for more light concerning the 
secrets of its being and its relation to ''the One 
who is the AH.'' Or let us count them as efforts 
of the soul to find expression and exercise for 
that principle of belief which is such a funda- 
mental element of its nature. We may at least 
regard all religions as products of human evolu- 
tion and essential elements of civilization and 
social order — unless all history is false. And be- 
cause they are all so natural, they must be more 
or less supernatural; because they are all so 
human, they must be more or less divine! 

But while religious creeds and systems are 
both factors and exponents of civilization, none 
of them bears the stamp of completeness or ab- 
solute perfection. 

And although some of them have withstood 
the wear and tear of many centuries, we must 
look on them all as subject to that unceasing pro- 
cess of change which we find in the material 



Essay on Truth. 67 

world from the smallest atom to the solar system 
itself. 

Religious creeds, at best, are only symbols or 
outlines of truth ; and being clothed in imperfect 
human language, we need not wonder that the 
human mind outgrows them, and that the vital 
truth which they contain at length refuses to be 
confined within the narrow shell which surrounds 
it. Says Tennyson: 

''Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day, and cease to be: 
They are but broken lights of Thee; 

For thou, O Lord, art more than they!" 

But the same poet has also sung : 

^'Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing pur- 
pose runs; 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the pro- 
cess of the suns !" 

And even if it can not be shown that the vari- 
ous changes in religious creeds are signs of 
progress in all cases, the fact remains that the 
changes themselves are inevitable. In its revo- 
lution around the sun from year to year, the 
earth may make no essential progress in the 
heavens; but in the language of Galileo, "It 
still moves V 

No religious creed can claim a monopoly of 
the truth it embodies; for all vital religious 



68 Essay on Truth. 

truth belongs to the race. Neither can any re- 
Hgion claim the right to speak the last word 
concerning any truth or principle; for the law 
of progress belongs to our religious life as cer- 
tainly as it belongs to our social life. If Evolu- 
tion is the universal law or principle that it is 
claimed to be, why should not all religions be 
included in its operations? Are they not all 
worthy to be counted as children of this king- 
dom? 

"New occasions teach new duties, 
Time makes ancient good uncouth. 
They must onward still and upward 
Who would keep abreast of Truth ! 

''Lo, her camp-fires gleam before us, 

We ourselves must pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 

Through the desperate, wintry sea; 
Nor attempt the future's portal 

With the past's blood-rusted key!'' 

No man can prophesy the modifications that 
will be made in Buddhism and Brahmanism and 
Confucianism and Shintoism and Mohammedan- 
ism — not mentioning Judaism and Christianity 
— during the twentieth century, if our present 
"strenuous life" continues until the year of our 
Lord two thousand. 

In making these statements we have no desire 
to discount — rather we wish to emphasize — the 
virtue of all religious creeds as long as they are 



Essay on Truth. 69 

believed with the heart and are the highest ex- 
pressions of men's religious natures that they can 
find. Because the dwelHngs we now build are so 
superior to the log-cabins of our forefathers, it 
does not follow that those cabins were built — 
and lived in — in vain. Because in these days of 
the steamship and the steam car we can cross an 
ocean or a continent in so short a time, we need 
not forget how the stage-coach and the sailing- 
vessel were once such vital agencies of commerce 
and civilization. 



70 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS NOTWITHSTAND- 
ING THEIR VARIETY. 

When the representatives of the world's vari- 
ous rehgions stood up at the opening of the 
'TarHament of Religions" in Chicago in the year 
1893 and sang the doxology — 

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" 

they not only furnished us a beautiful and in- 
spiring spectacle, but a most valuable object les- 
son. What further testimony do we need to show 
that on the one hand, all religions are imperfect, 
and on the other, that they all represent truths 
which are for the life and healing of the nations? 
And in the proceedings of that Parliament the 
fact most clearly brought to light was not that 
the religions of the world present so many points 
of agreement in their formal tenets, but that they 
have a common aspiration after light and truth 
and wisdom and perfection of character. The 
Parliament closed without proof that any of the 
religions there represented must be considered a 
complete or exclusive message from heaven, but 



Essay on Truth. 71 

not without proof that there is a "sympathy of 
religions" which shows them all to be the minis- 
ters and servants of human kind. 

''Among all these structures of spiritual or- 
ganization/' says Colonel Higginson, ''there is 
vital sympathy. It lies not in what they know ; 
for they are all alike, in a scientific sense, in 
knowing nothing. Their point of sympathy lies 
in what they have sublimely created through 
longing imagination. In all these faiths there is 
the same alloy of human superstition, the same 
fables of miracle and prophecy, the same signs 
and wonders, the same successive births and res- 
urrections. In point of knowledge they are all 
helpless ; in point of credulity, they are all puerile ; 
in point of aspiration they are all sublime. They 
all seek after God, if haply they might find him.'' 

"Religion," says Prof. Tyndall, "belongs not 
to man's knowing powers, but to his creative 
powers." 

It verily seems to us that if our foreign mis- 
sionaries could all realize this sympathy or sym- 
phony of religions, they might hope to secure an 
evolution of oriental faiths into something higher 
and better, whereas the "conversion of the 
heathen" to Christianity is a long way off, to say 
the least. 

It might seem very desirable that all the na- 



72 Essay on Truth. 

tions of the orient and the ''islands of the sea'' 
should relinquish their ''idolatry'' and accept the 
Christian faith ; but O, the centuries — rather the 
millenniums — that would be required for the 
necessary process of assimilation. And pray what 
would the people all believe while the trans- 
ition from one faith to the :)ther was in progress ? 

No doubt many Protestants would desire to see 
all Catholics converted to their form of Christi- 
anity — we will not here stop to inquire how 
long it would take to evolve the average Catholic 
into a consistent Protestant — and the union of 
all Protestant sects under one organization and 
form of worship ; but such a consummation would 
not only be contrary to the variety which is a fun- 
damental principle of human nature, but we fear 
it would crucify religion itself by robbing it of 
that subjective element which is the life of its 
life and the soul of its soul. 

Why should we not have a variety of religious 
creeds as well as a variety of trees and leaves of 
trees? If any one is really puzzled over the ex- 
istence of so many different creeds and forms of 
worship, let him ask the Creator why he has 
made so many different people and given them 
so many different kinds of "environment." 

These considerations, above all else, should 
cause us to see the utter blindness and folly as well 



Essay on Truth. 73 

as wickedness of all proscription or persecution 
on account of religious faith. When we remember 
that no two persons can receive the exact im- 
pression of any external object on the retina of 
their eyes, and that every star we behold in the 
heavens has its parallax — when we remember 
that spiritual things can only be seen with eyes 
of faith — can we not realize how impossible it 
is for all men to see alike in the spiritual realm? 
Nay, can we not realize that all sincere expres- 
sions of religious faith are worthy of our respect 
as well as our toleration and charity? We may 
not go as far as Dr. Horace Bushnell — we be- 
lieve it was he — who said he could subscribe his 
name to any creed that was framed by devout 
and honest people ; but we ought to have the high- 
est respect for every form of religious faith that 
does not conflict with the rights of man or the 
public peace and order. Not only so; but if we 
are right in our position that it is necessary for 
mankind to believe something, it is always best 
that people should hold fast to the faith they have 
until they are prepared for something higher and 
better — even as it is best for the child to believe 
that the sun rises every morning, until his mind is 
prepared for the knowledge of the earth's daily 
rotation. 

It is just as irrational for us to demand that 



74 Essay on Truth. 

other people shall believe what we believe and 
adopt our manner of worship, as it would be to 
demand that they shall walk in our footprints or 
breathe our breath. 

And even if it were the case, as we are so 
apt to think, that our particular creed is ''the 
Truth" without any limitation or modification, 
we would stlil do well to recognize the principle 
laid down by John Stuart Mill in his "Essay 
on Liberty:" 

''However unwillingly a person who has a 
strong opinion may admit the possibility of its 
being false, he ought to consider that however 
true it may be, if it is not fully, freely and fre- 
quently discussed, it will be held as a dead 
dogma, not a living truth !" 

And surely there can be no real discussion of 
any religious creed without a proper respect for 
other creeds and modes of worship. 



Essay on Truth. 75 



CHAPTER XVL 

IS CATHOLICISM EVOLVING AS WELL AS 
PROTESTANTISM ? 

But a proper recognition of all the religions of 
the world need not prevent our appreciating the 
superior features of Christianity; and not the 
least of these features must we consider its capac- 
ity of development, which enables it to keep pace 
— at least partial pace — with the evolutions of 
science and philosophy for which our age is so 
highly distinguished. 

This view might seem to be contradicted by the 
mere mention of the Roman Catholic church 
with its powerful hierarchy, its well-disciplined 
priesthood, and its claim that it permits no change 
in its theology or ritual and no modification of 
its authority over its members. But the Catholic 
church is only a part of Christendom; and with 
all our respect for its perfect order and organiza- 
tion and our recognition of the service it thereby 
renders to the bodies and souls of men, we are 
not certain that it can claim a perpetual lease of 
life, unless it learns the lesson of evolution. 

May we not even assert that the germs of evo- 
lution have already been implanted in this most 



76 Essay on Truth. 

venerable body? Are not its cardinals evolving 
more or less ? — are not its bishops evolving more 
or less ? — are not its priests evolving more or 
less ? — are not its laity evolving more rather than 
less? It is impossible for us to think that there 
is no leaven of "advanced thought" in the breasts 
of the mighty host who comprise the membership 
of this church. Good Catholics may believe the 
same things that were believed by their fathers 
and grandfathers ; but the tone and color of their 
belief are very much changed — unless we are 
very much mistaken. 

Let it not be thought, however, that we have 
set out to prophesy the decay or dissolution of 
this mighty organization. On the contrary, we 
believe it will live and flourish as long as m^en 
need — or think they need — its Infallible Pope, 
its Apostolic priesthood, its Latin liturgy, its con- 
fessional, its seven sacraments, its prayers for the 
dead, its parochial schools, its purgatorial fires 
and its authority over its communicants in all 
matters of faith and dogma. But the inner evo- 
lution of which we have spoken — this we think 
is as certain to continue as is the rising and set- 
ting of the sun. 

And since Catholicism as it now exists may be 
traced to the combined influence of Judaism, 
primitive Christianity and Roman law — should 



Essay on Truth. 77 

not Grecian philosophy also be included in this 
categoi*}^? — we may safely prophesy that at the 
close of the twentieth century it wnll be a very 
different institution from what it now is. 

The signs of evolution in that portion of 
Christendom called Protestant are too numerous 
to be questioned for a single moment. Here too 
the formal creeds and rites and ceremonies 
for the most part remain unchanged ; but what 
a marvelous change — revolution it should rather 
be called — there has been in the actual teaching 
and preaching of the various Protestant churches 
during the last fifty or sixty years. What modi- 
fications Orthodoxy has undergone through the 
influence of ''Unitarianism/' ''Universalism/^ 
''Swedenborgianism," "Liberalism,'' ''Evolution- 
ism/' and we had almost said ''Agnosticism;'' 
and the end is not yet — nor even the beginning 
of the end. 



78 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MYSTERY OF THE DIVINE BEING. 

There was a time within the memory of men 
still living, when all doubts concerning the per- 
sonality of Deity were branded as ''Atheism," 
but at the present time even men within the pale 
of orthodoxy are reverently inquiring whether 
the being of God is not too vast to be fully rep- 
resented by such a symbol as that of personal- 
ity; and so we are stretching the wings of our 
imagination and striving to compass within the 
limits of our understanding the Infinite Power, 
the Infinite Wisdom, the Infinite Goodness, the 
Infinite Presence and the Infinite Love. Is there 
no expansion of mind and soul in this process? 
Does it show a lack of piety and reverence to re- 
gard the Infinite Being as more than a person — 
provided we do not lose our sense of moral ob- 
ligation? Verily, the loss of this sense is the 
only atheism we need fear. 

On the one hand — as we shall see when we 
come to consider the doctrine of the Trinity — 
we can form no conception of Deity without the 
use of some symbol, and human personality is 



Essay on Truth. 79 

the highest symbol within our reach, and on the 
other, we can not help realizing that this symbol 
is imperfect and inadequate. Hence we need 
not be shocked or alarmed at the evolution of 
our minds and the expansion of our thoughts in 
the consideration of this most stupendous ques- 
tion. 

''And God said unto Moses, I am that I am!" 

''And he said. Thou canst not see my face, 
for there shall no man see me and live V 

"Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst 
thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?'' 

"God is a Spirit,'' says the Westminster Cate- 
chism, "infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his 
being — wisdom, power, holiness, justice, good- 
ness and truth." 

"It is dangerous," says Hooker, "for the feeble 
brain of man to wade far into the doings of the 
Most High, whom although to know be life, and 
joy to make mention of his name, yet our sound- 
est knowledge is to know that we know Him 
not as indeed He is^ neither can know Him, and 
our safest eloquence concerning him is our si- 
lence, whereby we confess without confession 
that His glory is inexplicable, and His great- 
ness beyond our capacity and reach." 

'^Of all points of faith," says Cardinal New- 
man, "the being of God is accompanied with 



80 Essay on Truth. 

most difficulty and borne in upon our minds with 
most power." 

And thus John Fiske: 'Tndeed, no word or 
phrase that we may apply to Deity can be other 
than an extremely inadequate and unsatisfactory 
symbol." 

And thus Ernest Renan : ''Under one form or 
another, God will always stand for the full ex- 
pression of our supersensual needs. He will ever 
be the category of the Ideal, the form under 
which things eternal and divine are conceived. 
The word may need to be interpreted in senses 
more and more refined, but it will never be su- 
perseded." 

And thus the Russian poet, Derzhavin : 

*'0, thou Eternal One whose presence bright 
All space doth occupy, all motion guide; 
Unchanged through Time's all-devastating flight! 
Thou only God — there is no God beside ! 
Being above all beings, Mighty One, 
Whom none can comprehend and none explore; 
Who fills't existence with Thyself alone. 
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er; 
Being whom we call God, and know no merer* 



Essay on Truth. 81 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

""^AND WHAT PROFIT SHOULD WE HAVE, IF WE 
PRAY UNTO HIM?"' 

We have learned, it may be, that we can in 
no wise reverse the order of Nature or free our- 
selves from the operation of her laws by our 
prayers ; but we have also learned that all prayer 
conceived in a submissive and righteous spirit 
will have its appropriate result and reward. So 
instead of believing that some of our prayers 
will be answered^ we believe — we even know — 
that they will all be answered in accordance with 
the Infinite Wisdom and Goodness. Instead of 
believing — or hoping — that we can change the 
course of an all-wise Providence by our prayers, 
we strive to become the ministers and servants 
of that Providence. And instead of believing^ 
that some things are providential, we realize that 
they are all providential — as far as we make 
them so ! 

How close a relation there may be between 
our prayers and the "laws" of the universe to 
which we are subject, we do not know and we 
do not need to know; but as certainly as our 
bodies are vitally related to the material world,. 



82 Essay on Truth. 

our spirits are related to the Spirit that ani- 
mates all Nature. Therefore it is the privilege 
of every son of earth to learn for himself how 
far his prayers are profitable to him and how 
close a relation he may sustain to the Infinite 
One, even as it is the privilege of the child to 
learn the value of its father's and mother's love. 
And as no one is prepared to deny the existence 
of God who has not traversed all the infinities 
of space, so no one can deny the efficacy of 
prayer who has not solved all the mysteries of 
life and learned all the secrets of the heavens 
and the earth. 

And is not our searching after the heart of 
the Infinite and our communion with the Infinite 
not only a perfectly rational exercise, but the 
highest exercise of which we are capable? 

"Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of 
life from the highest point of view; it is the 
soHloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul; it 
is the Spirit of God pronouncing His works 
good." 

'Tray as Christ did,'' says Robertson, "until 
prayer makes you cease praying! Pray till you 
lose your own wish and merge it in the divine 
will. The divine Wisdom has given us prayer 
not as a means of obtaining the good things of 
earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do 



Essay on Truth. 83 

without them, not as a means whereby we es- 
cape evil, but as a means whereby we become 
strong to meet and overcome it/' 

''Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit 
may meet.; 
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands 
and feet !" 



84 Essay on Truth. , ' 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

The formal doctrine of the Trinity as expressed 
in the Apostles' Creed would almost seem to have 
run its course; but its essential truth remains, 
for a purely abstract conception of Deity, even 
if we consider such a conception possible — will 
never satisfy us. He is, indeed, the Eternal 
Spirit that pervades the universe and dwells in 
the souls of men; but he is likewise the author 
(Father) of all life and phenomena, and we can 
never cease to symbolize and humanize him,, 
while our nature remains as finite as it is. 

The pious Mohammedan never tires of as- 
serting that there is only one God; but — with 
his face toward Mecca — he must needs declare 
in the same breath that ''Mohammed is his 
prophet." How much of his soul's adoration 
the average Mohammedan gives to the founder 
of his faith and how much to the one God we 
will not venture to say — we only know that Mo- 
hammedans are like the rest of mankind — they 
are very human ! 

Here is what Prof. Alexander Allen, in his 
''Continuity of Christian Thought" says concern- 



Essay on Truth. 85 

ing the establishment of the doctrine we are now- 
considering in the early Christian church : 

''In the formula of Father, Son and Holy- 
Ghost as three distinct and co-equal members in 
the one divine essence there was the recognition 
and the reconciliation of the philosophical schools 
which had divided the ancient world. In the 
idea of the Eternal Father, the oriental mind rec- 
ognized what it liked to call the eternal abyss of 
being, the hidden mystery which lies back of all 
phenomena and lends awe to human minds seek- 
ing to know the truth. In the doctrine of the 
Eternal Son revealing the Father immanent in 
Nature and humanity as the life and light shin- 
ing through all created things, the divine reason 
in which the human reason shares, there was the 
recognition of the truth after which Plato and 
Aristotle and the Stoics were struggling — the tie 
which binds the creation to God in the closest 
organic relationship. In the doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit, the church guarded against any 
pantheistic confusion of God with the world by 
upholding the life of the manifested Deity as es- 
sentially ethical or spiritual, revealing himself in 
humanity in its highest form only so far as hu- 
manity recognized its calling and through the 
Spirit entered into communion with the Father 
and the Son.'' 



86 Essay on Truth. 

It may be impossible for us to suppress a smile 
as we review the discussions of the ''Homoou- 
sians" and the Homoiousians" of the fourth cen- 
tury on the question whether the natures of the 
Father and the Son are identical or only similar ; 
but we would do well to remember not only that 
these men were discussing a question which they 
deemed one of vital importance, but that their 
discussions had a very important influence on 
the religious thought of their age and of subse- 
quent ages — even down to the present century. 

In speaking of the early triumphs of Christi- 
anity in the Roman empire Macaulay says: 
''God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the 
invisible, attracted few worshipers. A philoso- 
pher might admire so noble a conception ; but the 
crowd turned away in disgust from words which 
presented no image to their minds. It was be- 
fore Deity embodied in a human form, walking 
among men, partaking of their infirmities, lean- 
ing on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, 
slumbering in the manger and bleeding on the 
cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue and 
the doubts of the academy and the pride of the 
portico and the fasces of the lictor and the 
swords of thirty legions were humbled in the 

dust r 

This is a highly colored picture, but it brings 



Essay on Truth. 87 

the subjective truth of the Incarnation into the 
clear light of day and indicates very distinctly 
that something akin to the doctrine of the Trin- 
ity will always be found in Christianity, if not in 
all the other religions of the world. We do not 
claim that the triune God will always be recog- 
nized and worshiped ; but as long as the Supreme 
Power or Essence must always be conceived un- 
der the symbol of human personality — for there 
is no higher symbol — we may expect that even 
the most strenuous monotheists will always find 
more than one manifestation of Deity, if not 
more than one person in the godhead. 

And even if the supernatural divinity of Jesus 
can not stand the analysis of science and logic, 
the human divinity or divine humanity which he 
so truly represented is the heritage of our race, 
and will always find manifestation and expres- 
sion. Hence we may declare that in both the 
subjective and the objective sense the divine 
word (the logos) will always be made flesh, 
and divine men will always appear on the earth. 



88 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. 

There is a wide difference between the doctrine 
of the Atonement as formulated by Archbishop 
Anselm in the eleventh century and the same doc- 
trine as preached and expounded at the present 
day ; but although we can not logically recognize 
the "sacrifice of Christ'' as the price or condition 
of our salvation, the principle of sacrifice, which 
is the essential truth involved in this doctrine is 
in no wise impaired, but is rather more firmly 
established in our minds. We certainly see more 
clearly that all Nature is full of sacrifice, and 
that only by applying this law to ourselves can we 
secure the at-one-ment with the Infinite which we 
desire. We also see that the willingness to serve 
our fellow-men and suffer for them, if need be, 
is one of the highest tests of manhood, and that 
only by such service and suffering can we secure 
the largest and noblest life for ourselves. While 
there is no tower of brick or stone on which we 
may climb to the skies, in the fulfillment of this 
law each soul may find for itself a Jacob's ladder 
on which the angels are ever ascending and de- 



Essay on Truth. 89 

scending m their ministry of love and reconcili- 
ation. 

The legal atmosphere in which this doctrine 
was conceived and the legal form in which it has 
come down to us have not prevented men from 
appreciating its soul of truth and the appeal which 
it makes to the inmost principles of our nature, 
but perhaps we have only begun to appreciate the 
"high privilege which it suggests to all the sons of 
men. Its subjective truth reaches as high as our 
highest thought — yea, as high as heaven itself. 
Was not St. Peter thinking of our fulfillment of 
this law of sacrifice when he spoke of those 
promises whereby men may be made partakers 
of the divine nature? 

Wherefore let us remember that it is not as 
mere beneficiaries of the Atonement, but as its 
prophets and exemplars that we are to commend 
its truth to the souls of our fellow-men. 

The mystery of service and sacrifice is beyond 
our solution ; but it is for us all to acquaint our- 
selves with this law and so fulfill it that men will 
he saved by our life, and by our death, if need be. 
We know not why John Brown should carry his 
hatred of slavery so far as to defy the constitu- 
tion and laws of Virginia in the manner he did ; 
but he surely saw the glory of the coming of the 
Lord while lying in his prison cell and while 



90 Essay on Truth. 

dangling on the gallows. We can not understand 
why Abraham Lincoln should be killed by an as- 
sassin's bullet as soon as the triumph of the Union 
army was proclaimed to the world ; but it was 
needful — this much we must believe — that his 
devotion to his country should be made perfect by 
the laying down of his life and that his message 
of justice and charity to mankind should be 
sealed with his blood. From these examples and 
thousands and thousands of others less distin- 
guished, we may learn that the complete doctrine 
of the Atonement is not to be found in the record 
of a single sacrifice, but in the fulfillment of a 
fundamental law by all the sons of God who dwell 
on the earth. 

Says O. B. Frothingham in his ''Religion of 
Humanity :'' 

''The narrative of the New Testament is sub- 
lime when read as the legend of humanity, the 
history of the moral nature in all individuals, the 
history of the human quality, the saving quality, 
in all mankind. * * The Christ of Humanity 
is the Saviour, the physician of men's bodies and 
souls. He cures our sicknesses, expels our de- 
mons and heals our infirmities. He retores sight 
to the blind and hearing to the deaf, he makes the 
lame walk, he cleanses the defiled, he quickens 
the dying, he raises the dead, he opens the prison- 



Essay on Truth. 91 

house and gives liberty to the captives, he light- 
ens the burdens that press on the poor and mis- 
erable. He has gone into the wilderness in search 
of stray sheep ; he has pursued the moral leper 
into his desolated haunts among the graves; he 
has spent himself, worn himself out, literally died 
in poverty and outward wretchedness that the 
mission of brotherly love might be accomplished 
through him. He is the glorious company of the 
philosophers ; he is the noble army of reformers 
and philanthropists ; he is the holy band of the 
pure and wise in heart who counsel, warn, ad- 
monish and console the world. 

"Between the Unsearchable One and imperfect 
beings this Christ of Humanity perpetually me- 
diates, passing down to low places the light of 
regenerating influence and leading up weak and 
timid souls to the mountain top, where they see 
diviner forms and hear more celestial voices than 
come to them in their daily lives. This Christ 
touches both extremes ; his earthly lot associates 
him with lowliness and poverty, while his char- 
acter allies him with translated and immortal 
spirits. He eats with publicans and sinners, and 
communes with Moses and Elias. There is a stain 
on his mortal birth, but his home is in heaven.'' 



92 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

OTHER CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 

In the light of all the revelations of Geology 
and Astronomy, how innocent seems the belief 
that after the Almighty Power had created the 
Tieavens and the earth in six successive days and 
nights he ''rested" for the space of one day, and 
that for this reason we are required to keep one 
•day in seven holy in his sight ; but in this belief 
is bound up a fundamental need of man's moral 
and physical nature, which ''the Sabbath" has 
supplied and still supplies in our behalf. 

But at the same time, we know that "the Sab- 
bath was made for man," and is therefore to be 
observed with reason and intelligence; and since 
we have learned or are beginning to learn that 
all days are holy and all time is sacred, and that 
holy day and holiday can not be entirely sepa- 
rated — and ought not to be — there is no real 
occasion for alarm on account of the less strict 
observance of Sunday which appears to be a 
feature of our "progressive civilization" — pro- 
vided no one is denied the privilege of using one 



Essay on Truth. 93 

day in seven for rest and worship and all proper 
recreation. 

'Total Depravity" as a distinct doctrine has 
been well-nigh eliminated from the actual creed of 
our churches; but we have not eliminated from; 
human nature the weakness and blindness and 
inclination to evil that wreck so many lives and 
stand like giants in all our paths forbidding us 
to attain perfection of character to v/hich we 
aspire. As long as this side of our nature re- 
mains with us — and who can claim to be free 
from it? — something akin to "conversion/^ 
either as a definite and specific process or as a 
life-discipline or both, — will be needed by every 
soul of man. 

What shall we say concerning that "Day of 
Judgment," whose horrors once made such an 
impression on our minds and feelings? If we 
have ceased to believe in it, it is not because we 
have lost the distinction between righteousness 
and unrighteousness, or have cast oflf our 
fear of unrighteousness, but because we real- 
ize that we are always standing before "the 
judgment seat of Christ," and are placing 
ourselves on his right hand or his left hand 
by the thoughts that we cherish and the acts 
that we perform. This is the judgment-day 
in which we have learned to believe from our 



94 Essay on Truth. 

more subjective and more spiritual interpretation 
of the Scriptures and our more rational view of 
human responsibility. This is the judgment-day 
in which we must believe, because it is estab- 
lished in our hearts and consciences, if, indeed, it 
is not written on the face of the sky ! 

With the passing — we should rather say the 
spiritualizing — of our belief in the judgment- 
day, it must be noted that we no longer think of 
''Heaven'' and ''Heir' as places of reward and 
punishment. But surely there is no "decay of 
faith" in this; for we have learned to emphasize 
more fully the effect which every good act and 
every evil act must have on our characters. And 
if we are not quite prepared to say that there is 
vo salvation except character, we are certain as 
certain can be that there is no salvation without 
character. 

"The mind is own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven !'* 

"I sent my soul through the Invisible, 
Some letter of that after-life to spell; 

And by and by my soul returned to me, 
And answered, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell V* 

'Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they 
grind exceedingly small ; 
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exact- 
ness grinds he all !" 



Essay on Truth. 95 

"Whoso findeth me findeth Life — but he that 
s.nneth against me wrongeth his own soul !'' In- 
finite Wisdom is ever crying in our ears. 

Moral degradation is a hell which no trans- 
gressor can hope to escape here or hereafter ; and 
the more unconscious any one may be of such 
degradation, and the less pain he may suffer on 
account of it, the deeper is the hell in which he 
has pk'^ed himself. 

It is certainly a serious reflection that with 
this change in our notion of future rewards and 
punishments, many people's faith in immortality 
itself has greatly weakened; but let us take no 
alarm thereat. For on the one hand, the ''sweet 
reasonableness" of our hope can ever be cher- 
ished in our breasts ; and on the other, we may 
remember that the object of our lives is not 
to escape an eternity of suffering or secure 
an eternity of perfect bliss, but to fulfill the prin- 
ciples of our nature, whatever may be our portion 
after our earthly days and years are num- 
bered. We shall never realize our own extinc- 
tion — we shall never know, and we need not 
believe, that death will terminate our conscious- 
ness ; — but whatever be the law or order in the 
case, it must be just and righteous altogether. 
Professor Huxley was not impious when he said, 
''It is well, if the sleep be endless.'' And surely 



9G Essay on Truth. 

Job of old was not impious when from the depths 
of his soul he cried, 'Tf a man die, shall he live 
again?" 

Neither was there impiety in the breast of 
Thomas Carlyle, when he waived the question 
of personal immortality and proclaimed the etern- 
ity of all hiring in words like these : 

"Let us pierce through the time-element and 
glance into the Eternal. Let us believe that Time 
and Space are not God, but creations of God; 
that with God, as it is a universal Here, so it is 
an everlasting Now. Let us know of a truth, 
that only the time-shadows have perished or are 
perishable : that the real Being of whatever was, 
or is, or ever will be, is now and forever. * * * 
Thus like a God-created, fire-breathing spirit- 
host we emerge from the Inane, haste stormfuUy 
across the astonished Earth, then plunge again 
into the Inane. Earth's mountains are leveled, 
and her seas are filled up in our passage — can 
the Earth, which is but a vision and is dead, 
resist Spirits which have Reality and are Alive? 
On the hardest adamant some footprint of us 
is stamped in : the last Rear of the host will 
read traces of the earliest Van : but whence ? — 
O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not: Faith 
knows not : only that it is through Mystery to 
]\Ivsterv, from God and to God !'' 



Essay on Truth. 9T 

And thus Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses 
himself on this point: "These questions which 
we lust to ask about the future are a confession 
of sin! God has no answer for them, for no 
answer in words can reply to a question of things. 
The only mode of obtaining an answer to these 
questions of the senses is to forego all low curi- 
osity, and accepting the tide of being which floats- 
us into the secret of nature, work and live, work 
and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has^ 
built and forged for itself a new condition, and 
the question and the answer are one." 

Especially do we maintain that the motives 
of the future life are not essential to the cul- 
tivation of our religious natures and the prac- 
tice of morality and righteousness. On the con- 
trary, we insist that the present life furnishes 
motives sufficient unto the attainment of the 
highest moral excellence of which we are cap- 
able, if we can only appreciate them. What 
higher reward of virtue could we ask than virtue 
itself? Could even the Infinite Wisdom suggest 
a higher reward of righteousness than righteous- 
ness itself? 

Is not the dogmatic belief in our personal im- 
mortality too egoistic to be altogether spiritual? 
Should we not rather set our hearts on that im- 
mortality of fragrant memory and beneficent in- 



98 Essay on Truth. 

fluence which we may all leave behind us on the 
earth ? Should we not be satisfied, if it so be that 
Truth and Justice and Righteousness shall abide 
forever? Will w^e not live as long as they live? 
The ancient Jewish prophets were preachers 
of righteousness par excellence; yet they made 
no threats of future punishment and oflfered little 
or no reward beyond the present life. 



Essay on Truth. 99 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE. 

But are not all these doctrines we have as- 
sumed to discuss clearly defined in the Scriptures 
and forever settled by their word of authority? 
Nay, verily; for waiving all questions concern- 
ing the agreement of the Scriptures and the 
creeds of the various churches, not only is it im- 
possible to furnish a complete revelation of re- 
ligious truth in the language of men, but no man 
has ever sounded the depths of Infinity in our 
behalf, so that he can speak to us with an author- 
ity beyond all question. So the Scripture itself 
must be brought into the high court of Reason, 
that we may determine how far it is applicable to 
us and how far it can profit us. The infallibility 
or "inerrancy" of the Bible can not be proven 
by miracles (even if the miracles themselves were 
proven), or by prophecies or by the "internal 
evidences'' which were once deemed so conclu- 
sive ; and the only authority it can possibly pos- 
sess is the authority of the truths which it teaches 
and the light it sheds on those truths. 

And is not the authority of Truth the highest 
possible authority? 



100 Essay on Truth. 

And does not human freedom — the freedom 
of our reason and conscience — protest against 
an infalHble book as truly as against an infalHble 
church and an infalHble Pope? 

Thus we see that our Christianity, instead of 
being an ironclad ''revelation" or deposit of ab- 
solute truth is a sort of ''common law," adapting 
itself to the progress of the age and thereby be- 
coming a factor in that progress. Such a sys- 
tem has nothing to fear from the revelations of 
science or the speculations of philosophy ; for it 
ever leans on the bosom of Truth and keeps its 
own hand on the pulses of the human soul ! 

What a divine interpreter it thus becomes! 



Essay on Truth. 101 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE FORMS OF RELIGION. 

All that we have said in reference to the tenets 
and doctrines of Christianity and other religions 
might also be said in reference to their formal 
rites and ceremonies. That the forms of religion 
meet a fundamental want of human nature and 
that without them no religious order or organiza- 
tion could be maintained is very clear; but we 
consider them all subject to the law of change, 
and they must needs give way to other forms and 
ceremonies in the fullness of time. It is well that 
religious rites and ceremonies should be sacred 
in men's eyes, even to the verge of superstition; 
but let us not make them too sacred, lest we lose 
our spiritual vision and become idolaters. So far 
as the forms of religion quicken our aspirations 
and conserve the religious sentiment within us, 
they are both necessary and useful ; when they 
fail to do this, they are but sounding brass and 
tinkling cymbal. 



102 Essay on Truth. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

HOW FAR MAY THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER OR 
TEACHER EVOLVE? 

In view of these unceasing changes and modifi- 
cations of Christian doctrine, what is the evolving 
priest or minister or theological teacher to do 
who desires to be faithful to the creed he has 
avowed and likewise faithful to the *'inner light" 
of his own soul ? By what chart or compass shall 
he steer his ship across the sea on which he has 
embarked? If good faith to the organization to 
which he belongs seems to conflict with the heav- 
enly vision which has come to him, where shall he 
find an angel to direct his steps? If connection 
with his organization seems essential to his life 
work — and with most preachers this is the case — 
must he either close his eyes to the light, or re- 
linquish the high calling to which he has conse- 
crated and devoted himself? To preserve his 
honor and honesty must he either crucify his 
sacred convictions, or commit professional hari- 
kari before the eyes of his fellow men ? 

Perhaps the only answer that can be given to 
all such questions is, that he should walk through 
the world with open eyes and a conscience void 



Essay on Truth. 103 

of offense, that he should look well to the purity 
and integrity of his motives and the righteous- 
ness of all his purposes, that the idea of service 
should ever be uppermost in his mind, and that 
his teaching should be a vital message. For how- 
ever "orthodox" or however "heterodox" he may 
be, if he has a clear message from the depths of 
an honest soul, his doctrine is essentially true — 
otherwise it is essentially false. The true preacher 
must ever reveal himself as an incarnation of the 
truth which he preaches ; he must have the right 
to say — with utmost humility, of course — I am 
the Truth! 

How far he may honestly depart from the let- 
ter of his creed, or how far he may go in assume 
ing its truth, after he has outgrown its literal in- 
terpretation, are questions too fine for any one 
but himself to answer, but if the principle of 
Truth and the love of Service be in him and 
abound, his proper course will not be far to seek 
or hard to find — for Wisdom is ever justified of 
her children. 

We must concede that the preacher who strictly 
adheres to the rites and ceremonies of his church 
and satisfies his own soul with a message of con- 
ventional morality and theology may render a 
more or less important and necessary service to 
his fellow-men; but such a preacher can hardly 



104 Essay on Truth. 

claim a place among the prophets of the Highest 
— his pulpit is not a tower from which the stars 
are watched ! 

But even more sacred than is the obligation of 
the individual preacher to deliver the message 
which has been committed to him while preserv- 
ing the integrity of his own soul, is the obligation 
which rests upon every church to recognize the 
subjective side of truth and to tolerate and en- 
courage the largest liberty that can be reconciled 
with the integrity of its organization in inter- 
preting and expounding its imperfect doctrines 
and applying them to the practical life of the peo- 
ple; for only in this way can the spirit of Truth 
be glorified in the life of any church. 

In all the affairs of life, from the highest offi- 
cial administration to the crudest forms of man- 
ual labor, a certain measure of individual judg- 
ment and discretion is allowed to every agent or 
workman. Therefore it is not too much to claim 
that no man can be a living preacher, unless he is 
allowed to breathe the air of free manhood ~ un- 
less he can think freely and express his thoughts 
without other restraint than that which sound 
wisdom and discretion and a good conscience im- 
pose on him. Every preacher who wishes to 
prove himself worthy of his high vocation should 
have some message of faith and duty which is 



Essay on Truth. 105 

all his own, some message which no one else can 
deliver, some truth which he has learned by meet- 
ing the Lord himself on the mountain. If he has 
no such a message, what can he teach his fellow- 
men that they do not already know? And why 
should he desire to preach to them at all ? 

And could any church commit a more unpar- 
donable sin than to deny that spirit of prophecy 
which dwells in the souls of men, or forbid its 
expression except in prescribed terms and sym- 
bols? 

If strict conformity to some creed or system 
of theology had always been the highest law for 
preachers of righteousness, would the message 
of the Old Testament prophets ever have been 
delivered? Would the voice of John the Baptist 
crying in the wilderness ever have been heard? 
Would Christianity itself ever have been estab- 
lished in the world? Think of imposing such 
conformity on a St. Paul, a Chrysostom, a Savon- 
arola, a Luther, a Wesley, a Whitefield, a Chan- 
ning, a Chapin, a Robertson, a Theodore Parker, 
:a Horace Bushnell, a Phillips Brooks, a Robert 
'Collyer, or a Henry Ward Beecher ! 

While we must concede the right of every 
<:hurch to maintain its organization and propa- 
gate its own doctrines — as a means of promoting 
the moral and spiritual life of the people — it 



106 Essay on Truth. 

should be very slow to prosecute its ministers or 
teachers for ''heresy/' lest haply it be found ston- 
ing the prophets of the Lord! 



Essay on Truth. lOT 



CAPTER XXV. 

TRUTH HAS AN ABIDING FOUNDATION — *'lTS OWN 
REVOLVENCY UPHOLDS THE EARTH !" 

Should all these things make us tremble for 
the foundations of Truth, or fear that religious^ 
faith and all other faith will perish from the 
earth ? 

If anyone is really afflicted with such fears,, 
let him remember that there have been and may 
still be certain people who can not believe that 
the earth is round, because they think it would 
then have no foundation, such persons being- 
unable to realize that the attraction of the sun 
and other heavenly bodies is a foundation that 
transcends conception, and must continue as long- 
as the earth itself continues. Says the poet 
Cowper : 

"By ceaseless action all that is subsists. 
Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel 
That Nature rides upon maintains her health, 
Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads 
An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves^ 
Its own revolvency upholds the earth." 

And if the earth needs no other foundation 
or support than its relation to all the forces of 



108 Essay on Truth. 

Nature, should we desire any higher authority 
for our rehgious faiths than their relation to all 
truth and the aliment and inspiration which they 
furnish to the souls of men? Could the Lord 
of Truth himself place them on any higher or 
firmer foundation? 

This, then, is our conclusion concerning all re- 
ligions and all arts and sciences and philosophies 
and rules of life: As all the products of the 
material world that we can digest and assimilate 

— that is, turn into blood and bone and muscle 

— are entitled to be called Food, so whatever 
nourishes and sustains our mental and moral 
natures — whatever ministers to the life of our 
souls — whether it be fact or fancy or music or 
poetry or legend or mystery or sentiment or 
faith or hope or aspiration — bears the image 
and superscription of Truth, and should be rec- 
ognized as Truth by us. 

Is not this at least a partial and approximate 
answer to the question, "What is Truth?'* 



And as the fruits of the earth can not be ob- 
tained for the nourishment of our bodies, with- 
out the cultivation of her soil, so the Truth we 
need for the nourishment of our higher natures 



Essay on Truth. 109' 

must be searched after with diligence and intelli- 
gence and with pure minds and hearts. 

And even this is not all. 

It is the opinion of some scientists — and we 
dare to believe they are right ! — that the light 
and heat of the sun do not come to us in direct 
rays as from a luminous and combustible body, 
but are generated by a mysterious electric com- 
munication between the sun and the earth, the 
sun being no more a mass of light and fire than, 
the earth itself. Whether our earth actually plays 
this part in the generation of its light and heat 
or not, we are certainly endowed with faculties^ 
that make us more than the mere recipients of 
Truth — are we not its agents and factors, yea, 
its creators, as well? Is it not at least our office 
to extract the Truth — the corn and wine and 
milk and honey of life — from all things that 
come to our perception and cognition by subject- 
ing them to the process of mental digestion ancJ 
assimilation? Are we not co-workers of the 
Lord of Truth in the establishment and mainte- 
nance of his kingdom in the earth ? 

And although we can not compass the abso- 
lute truth, but must see all things as through a 
glass darkly, that spirit of Truth which pervades- 
the universe is ever ready to take up its abode 



110 Essay on Truth. 

with us and give us light and peace. Let us 
not grieve this spirit, but ever cherish its pres- 
ence within us; for verily it is superior to all 
arts and sciences and philosophies and codes of 
morals and systems of religion. 

When we possess this spirit and are possessed 
of it, we will rejoice in whatever knowledge we 
attain and likewise in the mysteries that are be- 
yond our powers of solution. 

When we are possessed of this spirit we can 
see the many-sidedness of Truth and the limita- 
tions of our own minds, and will therefore be 
clothed with humility and charity as with a 
garment. 

Possessed of this spirit we shall learn how to 
interpret all Nature's phenomena so as to see 
peace and order in her seeming conflicts, light 
amid her darkness and shadows, and tokens 
of wisdom and goodness in the play of all her 
mysterious forces. All Nature will then be to 
us not merely the garment of Deity but a reve- 
lation of his attributes and character. 

Possessed of this spirit, we shall learn how to 
adapt ourselves to our ''environment," so that 
all our experiences, whether of pain or pleasure, 
will be means of the highest evolution to our 
nature. The ''moral uses of dark things" can 



Essay on Truth. Ill 

only be seen by those in whom the spirit of Truth 
abides. 

Possessed of this spirit, we may plant our feet 
on the facts of the material world, while our 
souls may rise to Olympian heights where we 
shall hear the music of the spheres and see vis- 
ions of immortal beauty and glory ! 

Possessed of this spirit, there will be no ''con- 
flict of religion and science'' in our minds; for 
our religion will be scientific in the broadest pos- 
sible sense, and whatever scientific knowledge 
we possess will be permeated with the adoration 
and worship of the Supreme and the Infinite. 

Neither shall we be troubled on account of the 
seeming contradictions that we find in the realm 
of Truth; for we shall learn that all moral and 
spiritual truths are the combination or reconcile- 
ment of two opposing propositions, neither of 
which can be denied, and yet neither of which can 
be affirmed in such a manner as to exclude the 
other. 

Possessed of this spirit, we shall realize that 
Truth is not a jealous tyrant seeking to trample 
on her sister virtues or drive them from her pres- 
ence ; rather she delights to stand in the center of 
them all, that she may shed her light and beauty 
upon them all ! 



112 Essay on Truth. 

Possessed of this spirit, we shall have no fears 
for the foundations of our faith ; for we will 
realize that if all existing systems of morality, 
philosophy and religion were to be extinguished, 
out of the depths of men's souls would arise new 
systems, according to the wants and needs of 
the various nations and peoples and kindreds and 
tongues that dwell on the earth! 

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; 
for the first heaven and the first earth were passed 
away." 

Wherefore, if the story of ''the Fair' and many 
other narratives of our Scriptures must be re- 
manded to the realm of legend and mythology, 
and the most cherished doctrines and dogmas 
which have come down to us from the centuries 
of the past must be "re-stated" and refined and 
spiritualized until we scarcely know by what 
name they should be called, the essential truth 
of these narratives and doctrines will yet remain 
in the souls of all men who love the Truth and 
worship at her altars. 

If the miracles that were once counted chief 
among the "Evidences of Christianity" because 
they were wrought by supernatural power are 
now considered possible only so far as they are 
supposed to be the operation of some law or 
laws that we do not understand, there remains 



Essay on Truth. llS 

the unceasing miracle of moral and spiritual 
power. This is the miracle of miracles, the mir- 
acle whereof we all are witnesses, the miracle 
which is from everlasting to everlasting. God 
always creates the heavens and the earth, and his 
Spirit always moves on the face of the waters — 
for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. 
Should not all souls rejoice in the abiding pres- 
ence of the Infinite? 

Is not all natural power also supernatural? 
Is not all supernatural power also natural? We 
need no miracle to convince us that the sun 
shines on us from day to day — except the mira- 
cle of its light and heat ! 

If the Bible, which we once cherished — and 
perhaps worshiped — as a complete and infallible 
revelation from heaven, must now be pronounced 
a collection or literature of history and poetry 
and legends and allegories and moral maxims, 
written by men of senses, affections and passions 
like our own, we can still cherish it as a fountain 
of light and wisdom and comfort and inspiration 
— we may even know that it is inspired because 
it inspires us. And if we find the same proof of 
inspiration in other Scriptures and literatures, 
they too are our treasure and heritage. For ver- 
ily the inspiration of the Spirit has not been lim- 



114 Essay on Truth. 

ited to any given number of men, neither has it 
departed from the souls of all men now living 
on the earth ! Has all communication ceased 
between Heaven and Earth ? Does God no longer 
walk and talk with men? 

If the doctrine of the Atonement in the form in 
which it has come down to us no longer stirs the 
depths of our hearts or commands the assent of 
our reason, we can hold fast to the principle of 
service and sacrifice which it involves ; and above 
all, we can make our own lives worth living by 
devoting them to the service of our fellow-men. 

Can any one claim to be a real believer in the 
^'Atonement of Christ," unless he is fulfilling the 
same law that Christ fulfilled? — unless he is 
drinking of the same cup of which Christ drank, 
and is baptized with the same baptism wherewith 
he was baptized ? 

If the formal doctrine of the Trinity must be 
considered a mathematical or metaphysical puz- 
zle which no man can solve, we can still believe in 
the manifold attributes of Deity and in the mani- 
fold manifestations of his character that we see in 
Nature and Providence and in the lives of all the 
men and women who bear his likeness and image. 

If the glories of the future heaven must, in- 
deed, fade from our eyes, we can still appreciate 



Essay on Truth. 116 

the glory and fullness of our present life and be 
content that our bodies shall return to the earth 
and our spirits to the Infinite Spirit whence tliey 
came forth. The Judge of all the earth will do 
right — whatsoever he doeth ! 

Nay, if our whole Christian system, with all 
other systems of religion and philosophy, must 
be considered as subject to the inevitable pro- 
cesses of evolution and dissolution — if heaven 
and earth themselves must pass away — we can 
still believe^ — yea, rejoice — in the beauty of 
holiness, in the grace and charm of virtue, in the 
dignity and worth of righteousness, and in the 
divinity of all true manhood and womanhood. 

And are we exercised, as we ever should be, 
concerning our individual duties and obligations? 
— are we anxious to fulfill that law of righteous- 
ness which is written in our hearts and consci- 
ences ? — do we desire to serve our generation 
with all the talents that have been committed to 
us ? — do we pray without ceasing that the highest 
moral standards and ideals may be revealed in 
our lives? Then let us ever cherish the Scripture 
which saith: "He hath shown thee, O man, what 
is good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, 
but to do justly, to love mercy , and to walk hum- 
bly with thy God ?" There is yet another Script- 



116 Essay on Truth. 

ure which saith : "And now abideth Faith, Hope, 
Love — these three ; but the greatest of these is 
Love!" 

"Love makes the world go round!" 



Addenda. 117 

ADDENDA. 

I. 

In connection with all that we have said in Chap- 
ter IV concerning the plays of children, we would fain 
cry out in the ears of all the people against the factory 
life and sweatshop life to which so many little chil- 
dren are subjected even under American skies. O, 
righteous Heaven, is there no remedy for such in- 
fernal cruelty and barbarism ! 

"Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 

Ere the sorrow comes with years? 
They are leaning their young heads against their 
mothers ; 

And that can not stop their tears. 
The young lambs are frisking in the meadows ; 

The young birds are chirping in the nest; 
The young fav\ais are playing with the shadows ; 

The young flowers are blowing toward the west : — 
But the young, young children, O my brothers, 

They are weeping bitterly. 
They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 

In the country of the free !" 

IL 

How easy it is for people of all classes to forget 
the principle of equality, which we briefly discussed 
in Chapter ix. Even parents and teachers and priests 
and ministers and the most zealous reformers are lia- 
ble to forget that this principle should ever be cher- 
ished in their breasts, and that they can not truly serve 
their fellow-men without being as ready to give re- 
spect as to receive it. 

We have even feared that many "penologists" 



118 Addenda. 

of our day are so accustomed to ringing the changes 
on "criminals" and "criminal classes" that they have 
become crystallized, and fail to remember that the only 
way we can do justice to the prisoner is to put our- 
selves in his place, and to study the prison question 
from the standpoint of the prisoner's cell ! We fear 
they have become so absorbed in considering systems 
and methods of "discipline" as to forget that prisoners 
are men of like natures with the rest of mankind, and 
that the secret of all reformatory discipline is the 
maintenance of the prisoner's self-respect. Would 
that all prison officials, too, would remember that the 
subjects of their authority are creatures of the same 
flesh and blood as themselves! 

III. 
To sustain the claim made in Chapter xvi that there 
is an actual process of evolution in the Catholic church, 
we need only compare the "encyclicals" of Pope Leo 
XIII with those of his predecessors, near and remote. 
Leo, indeed, is dead; but the spirit of his administra- 
tion will live on through the ages, and the impress of 
his wisdom and humanity will be felt wherever the 
sign of the cross and the sacrifice of the mass are 
presented to the eyes of men. 

IV. 

The miracle of moral and spiritual power spoken 
of in our last chapter is the miracle of which all other 
miracles are but types and shadows. This is the mir- 
acle which proves the being of God, the worth of hu- 
man life and the eternity of all truth and righteous- 
ness. This miracle, more than all else, "points out an 
hereafter and intimates eternity to man!" It certainly 



Addenda. 119 

unites the finite and the Infinite, the human and the 
divine, in the closest and most vital relation. 

V. 

Will our readers indulge us in a few more remarks 
concerning the principle of human equality, especially 
concerning its application to the labor question? 

Even a wayfaring man, we think, ought to see that 
the mere question of wages does not reach the bottom 
of the issues between capital and labor; for underlying 
this question is the more vital question whether labor- 
ing men shall have any power in determining the wages 
they are to receive and the other conditions under which 
they are to be employed. 

For it seems to us very clear, in the presence of 
such combinations of capital as we now have, that un- 
less the body of laborers have a considerable measure 
of such power, not only would their wages be reduced 
to a very low figure, but their self-respect would be 
seriously impaired, if not almost extinguished. 

When President George F. Baer, of the Reading 
Railroad, asserted the divine right of his coal companies 
to operate their mines without giving their employes 
any voice in the settlement of the various questions that 
were in dispute between the two parties, whether he 
realized that he was doing so or not, he trampled both 
the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule 
under his feet. He may not have meant to say to his 
employes that he was unwilling to respect their man- 
hood, but he certainly sought to deprive them of all 
power to command his respect or his recognition of the 
principle of equality on which our government is based. 

Many other capitalists and employers of labor, we 
fear, have imbibed the notion that they have an absolute 



120 Addenda. 

or divine right to everything which society permits them 
to "own," and that they must therefore be allowed to 
conduct their own business without reference to the 
rights of their employes or of the public. Why can we 
not all learn the simple truth that the ownership of 
property is a matter of public expediency alone? Why 
can we not learn that the divine right of property own- 
ers rests on the same* basis — which is no basis at all — as 
the divine right of kings? How can the ownership of 
property give the heads of corporations any right to 
crucify the self-respect of their employes and reduce 
them to industrial slavery? 

It is very easy to show that labor unions have often 
been blind and unreasonable, and in many cases have 
been guilty of serious excesses; but all this does not 
affect the truth of what we have claimed concerning the 
vital issue between capital and labor. Nay; the very 
errors and unlawful acts of organized labor ought to 
convince us that a proper balance of power and a proper 
respect for the manhood of laborers is the only possible 
solution of the problem that is before us. We may even 
assert in this connection, that it would be at least a par- 
tial solution of the various questions pertaining to "do- 
mestic service," if women in high social position would 
all recognize the fact that their "maids" and "servants" 
and "hired girls" have souls as well as themselves ! 

And whatever lessons have yet to be learned by or- 
ganized labor, the owners and controllers of capital 
should always keep in mind that the men and women 
in their employ are not only entitled to decent wages, 
but to that recognition and respect which is the right 
of all human creatures under the sun. For verily, in 
that ideal realm where Truth and Justice sit enthroned, 
"all men are created equal." 



AUG 88 1903 



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